entirely from within.
Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the external
harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined
themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to
speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave
appeal,--all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence
of a wise, benignant soul. But it was the voice which best revealed her, a
voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her
uttered words with the mystery of a world that must remain untold. And then
again, when in moments of more intimate converse some current of emotion
would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in
unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was not
one to be soon forgotten. It has not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls
to whose childlike confidence all heaven and earth are fair. Rather it was
the look of a strenuous Demiurge, of a soul on which high tasks are laid,
and which finds in their accomplishment its only imagination of joy."

Another side of her influence on persons is expressed by the representative
of that publishing house which gave her books to the world. "In addition to
the spell which bound the world to her by her genius, she had a personal
power of drawing to herself, in ties of sympathy and kindly feeling, all
who came under her influence. She never oppressed any one by her talents;
she never allowed any one to be sensible of the depth and variety of her
scholarship; she knew, as few know, how to draw forth the views and
feelings of her visitors, and to make their sympathies her own. There was a
charm in her personal character which of itself was sufficient to
conciliate deep and lasting regard. Every one who entered her society left
it impressed with the conviction that they had been under the influence of
a sympathy and tenderness not less remarkable than the force of her mental
power.... Her deep and catholic love for humanity in its broadest and best
sense, which was in itself the strongest quickening motive of her genius,
will maintain her influence in the future as in the present."

Hers was a somewhat sensitive, shrinking nature, with no self-assumption,
and without the taint of egotism. She had a modest estimate of her own
great literary creations, and shrank from all mention of them and from the
homage paid to her as an author