so formidable?"

"Ah! Gabriella, let bygones be bygones. I was very harsh, very
disagreeable then. I wonder you have ever forgiven me; I have never
forgiven myself. I know not how it is, but it seems to me that a
softening change has come over me. I feel more tenderly towards the
young beings committed to my care, more indulgence for the weaknesses
and errors of my kind. I did not mind, then, trampling on a flower, if
it sprung up in my path; now I would stoop down and inhale its
fragrance, and bless my Maker for shedding beauty and sweetness to
gladden my way. The perception of the beautiful grows and strengthens in
me. The love of nature, a new-born flower, blooms in my heart, and
diffuses a sweet balminess unknown before. Even poetry, my child--do not
laugh at me--has begun to unfold its mystic beauties to my imagination.
I was reading the other evening that charming paraphrase of the
nineteenth Psalm: 'The spacious firmament on high,' and I was
exceedingly struck with its melodious rhythm; and when I looked up
afterwards to the starry heavens, to the moon walking in her brightness,
to the blue and boundless ether, they seemed to bend over me in love, to
come nearer than they had ever done before. I could hear the whisper of
that divine voice, which is heard in the rustling of the forest trees,
the gurgling of the winding stream, and the rush of the mountain
cataract; and every day," he added, with solemnity, "I love man more,
because God has made him my brother."

He paused, and his countenance glowed with the fervor of his feelings.
With an involuntary expression of reverence and tenderness, I held out
my hand and exclaimed,--

"My dear master--"

"You forgive me, then," taking my hand in both his, and burying it in
his large palms; "you do not think me officious and overbearing?"

"O no, sir, I have nothing to forgive, but much to be grateful for;
thank you, I must go, for I have a long walk to take--_alone_."

With an emphasis on the last word I bade him adieu, ran down the steps,
and went on musing so deeply on my singular interview with Mr. Regulus,
that I attempted to walk through a tree by the way-side. A merry laugh
rang close to my ear, and Richard Clyde sprang over the fence right
before me.

"It should have opened and imprisoned you, as a truant dryad," said he.
"Of what _are_ you thinking, Gabriella, that you forget the
impenetrability of matter, the opacity of bark and the incapability of
flesh