s of the sexes, that
woman takes to written composition more impulsively, more intuitively,
than man,--letter-writing, to him a task-work, is to her a recreation.
Between the age of sixteen and the date of marriage, six well-educated
clever girls out of ten keep a journal; not one well-educated man in ten
thousand does. So, without serious and settled intention of becoming an
author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and vivid fancy seeks
in poetry or romance a confessional,--an outpouring of thought and
sentiment, which are mysteries to herself till she has given them words,
and which, frankly revealed on the page, she would not, perhaps could
not, utter orally to a living ear.

During the last few days, the desire to create in the realm of fable
beings constructed by her own breath, spiritualized by her own soul, had
grown irresistibly upon this fair child of song. In fact, when
Graham's words had decided the renunciation of her destined career, her
instinctive yearnings for the utterance of those sentiments or thoughts
which can only find expression in some form of art, denied the one vent,
irresistibly impelled her to the other. And in this impulse she was
confirmed by the thought that here at least there was nothing which
her English friend could disapprove,--none of the perils that beset the
actress. Here it seemed as if, could she but succeed, her fame would be
grateful to the pride of all who loved her. Here was a career ennobled
by many a woman, and side by side in rivalry with renowned men. To her
it seemed that, could she in this achieve an honoured name, that name
took its place at once amid the higher ranks of the social world, and
in itself brought a priceless dowry and a starry crown. It was, however,
not till after the visit to Enghien that this ambition took practical
life and form. One evening after her return to Paris, by an effort
so involuntary that it seemed to her no effort, she had commenced a
tale,--without plan, without method, without knowing in one page what
would fill the next. Her slight fingers hurried on as if, like the
pretended spirit manifestations, impelled by an invisible agency without
the pale of the world. She was intoxicated by the mere joy of inventing
ideal images. In her own special art an elaborate artist, here she had
no thought of art; if art was in her work, it sprang unconsciously from
the harmony between herself and her subject,--as it is, perhaps, with
the early so