, and the
very children have but one wish; that is, that I should visit them again
to-morrow. I went this afternoon to tune Charlotte's piano. But I could
not do it, for the little ones insisted on my telling them a story; and
Charlotte herself urged me to satisfy them. I waited upon them at tea,
and they are now as fully contented with me as with Charlotte; and
I told them my very best tale of the princess who was waited upon by
dwarfs. I improve myself by this exercise, and am quite surprised at the
impression my stories create. If I sometimes invent an incident which I
forget upon the next narration, they remind one directly that the story
was different before; so that I now endeavour to relate with exactness
the same anecdote in the same monotonous tone, which never changes. I
find by this, how much an author injures his works by altering them,
even though they be improved in a poetical point of view. The first
impression is readily received. We are so constituted that we believe
the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory,
woe to him who would endeavour to efface them.

AUGUST 18.

Must it ever be thus,--that the source of our happiness must also be the
fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated
my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of
delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an
insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harasses
me. When in bygone days I gazed from these rocks upon yonder mountains
across the river, and upon the green, flowery valley before me, and saw
all nature budding and bursting around; the hills clothed from foot
to peak with tall, thick forest trees; the valleys in all their varied
windings, shaded with the loveliest woods; and the soft river gliding
along amongst the lisping reeds, mirroring the beautiful clouds which
the soft evening breeze wafted across the sky,--when I heard the groves
about me melodious with the music of birds, and saw the million swarms
of insects dancing in the last golden beams of the sun, whose setting
rays awoke the humming beetles from their grassy beds, whilst the
subdued tumult around directed my attention to the ground, and I there
observed the arid rock compelled to yield nutriment to the dry moss,
whilst the heath flourished upon the barren sands below me, all this
displayed to me the inner warmth which animates all nature, and filled