ality manifests itself and shines in
all these little pictures. This short passage describing how she took
Lizzie, the little village child she loved, to gather cowslips in the
meadows, will serve as an illustration.

They who know these feelings (and who is so happy as not to
have known some of them) will understand why Alfieri became powerless,
and Froissart dull; and why even needlework, the most effective
sedative, that grand soother and composer of women's distress, fails
to comfort me today. I will go out into the air this cool, pleasant
afternoon, and try what that will do.... I will go to the meadows, the
beautiful meadows and I will have my materials of happiness, Lizzie and
May, and a basket for flowers, and we will make a cowslip ball. "Did
you ever see a cowslip ball, Lizzie?" "No." "Come away then; make haste!
run, Lizzie!"

And on we go, fast, fast! down the road, across the lea,
past the workhouse, along by the great pond, till we slide into the deep
narrow lane, whose hedges seem to meet over the water, and win our way
to the little farmhouse at the end. "Through the farmyard, Lizzie; over
the gate; never mind the cows; they are quiet enough." "I don't mind
'em," said Miss Lizzie, boldly and' truly, and with a proud affronted
air, displeased at being thought to mind anything, and showing by her
attitude and manner some design of proving her courage by an attack on
the largest of the herd, in the shape of a pull by the tail. "I don't
mind 'em." "I know you don't, Lizzie; but let them, alone and don't
chase the turkey-cock. Come to me, my dear!" and, for wonder, Lizzie
came.

In the meantime my other pet, Mayflower, had also gotten into a scrape.
She had driven about a huge unwieldy sow, till the animal's grunting
had disturbed the repose of a still more enormous Newfoundland dog, the
guardian of the yard.

The beautiful white greyhound's mocking treatment of the surly dog on
the chain then follows, and other pretty scenes and adventures, until
after some mishaps and much trouble the cowslip ball is at length
completed.

What a concentration of fragrance and beauty it was! Golden and sweet to
satiety! rich in sight, and touch, and smell! Lizzie was enchanted, and
ran off with her prize, hiding amongst the trees in the very coyness
of ecstasy, as if any human eye, even mine, would be a restraint on her
innocent raptures.

Here the very woman is revealed to us, her tender and lively
disposition,