eeling?'

* * * * *

'How beautiful the life of Benvenuto Cellini! How his
occupations perpetually impelled to thought,--to gushings of
thought naturally excited!'

* * * * *

'Father lectured me for looking satirical when the man of
Words spake, and so attentive to the man of Truth,--that is,
of God.'

Margaret used often to talk about the books which she and I were
reading.

GODWIN. 'I think you will be more and more satisfied with
Godwin. He has fully lived the double existence of man, and he
casts the reflexes on his magic mirror from a height where
no object in life's panorama can cause one throb of delirious
hope or grasping ambition. At any rate, if you study him, you
may know all he has to tell. He is quite free from vanity, and
conceals not miserly any of his treasures from the knowledge
of posterity.

M'LLE. D'ESPINASSE. 'I am swallowing by gasps that _cauldrony_
beverage of selfish passion and morbid taste, the letters
of M'lle D'Espinasse. It is good for me. How odious is the
abandonment of passion, such as this, unshaded by pride or
delicacy, unhallowed by religion,--a selfish craving only;
every source of enjoyment stifled to cherish this burning
thirst. Yet the picture, so minute in its touches, is true as
death. I should not like Delphine now.'

Events in life, apparently trivial, often seemed to her full of mystic
significance, and it was her pleasure to turn such to poetry. On one
occasion, the sight of a passion-flower, given by one lady to another,
and then lost, appeared to her so significant of the character,
relation, and destiny of the two, that it drew from her lines of
which two or three seem worth preserving, as indicating her feeling of
social relations.

'Dear friend, my heart grew pensive when I saw
The flower, for thee so sweetly set apart,
By one whose passionless though tender heart
Is worthy to bestow, as angels are,
By an unheeding hand conveyed away,
To close, in unsoothed night, the promise of its day.

* * * * *

'The mystic flower read in thy soul-filled eye
To its life's question the desired reply,
But came no nearer. On thy gentle breast
It hoped to find the haven of its rest;
But in cold night, hurried afar from thee,
It closed its once half-smil