g
degree. But in this year, 1840, in which events occurred which
combined great happiness and pain for her affections, she remained for
some time in a sort of ecstatic solitude. She made many attempts
to describe her frame of mind to me, but did not inspire me with
confidence that she had now come to any experiences that were profound
or permanent. She was vexed at the want of sympathy on my part, and
I again felt that this craving for sympathy did not prove the
inspiration. There was a certain restlessness and fever, which I did
not like should deceive a soul which was capable of greatness. But
jets of magnanimity were always natural to her; and her aspiring
mind, eager for a higher and still a higher ground, made her gradually
familiar with the range of the mystics, and, though never herself laid
in the chamber called Peace, never quite authentically and originally
speaking from the absolute or prophetic mount, yet she borrowed from
her frequent visits to its precincts an occasional enthusiasm, which
gave a religious dignity to her thought.

'I have plagues about me, but they don't touch me now. I thank
nightly the benignant Spirit, for the unaccustomed serenity in
which it enfolds me.

'---- is very wretched; and once I could not have helped
taking on me all his griefs, and through him the griefs of his
class; but now I drink only the wormwood of the minute, and
that has always equal parts,--a drop of sweet to a drop
of bitter. But I shall never be callous, never unable to
understand _home-sickness_. Am not I, too, one of the band who
know not where to lay their heads? Am I wise enough to hear
such things? Perhaps not; but happy enough, surely. For that
Power which daily makes me understand the value of the little
wheat amid the field of tares, and shows me how the kingdom of
heaven is sown in the earth like a grain of mustard-seed, is
good to me, and bids me call unhappiness happy.'

* * * * *

TO ----

'_March_, 1842.--My inward life has been more rich and deep,
and of more calm and musical flow than ever before. It seems
to me that Heaven, whose course has ever been to cross-bias
me, as Herbert said, is no niggard in its compensations. I
have indeed been forced to take up old burdens, from which I
thought I had learned what they could teach; the pen has been
snatched from my hand just