in the same maiden mourning, holding in one
hand long streamers of broad white ribbon attached to the bier, and in
the other several white narcissus blossoms.

The ghostly train and the picturesque mediaeval monument, close to which
we paused and clustered to deposit the dead girl in her early
resting-place, formed a striking picture that haunted me for a long
time, and which the smell and sight of the chalk-white narcissus blossom
invariably recalls to me.

Meantime, the poetical studies, or rather indulgencies of home, had
ceased. No sonorous sounds of Milton's mighty music ever delighted my
ears, and for my almost daily bread of Scott's romantic epics I hungered
and thirsted in vain, with such intense desire, that I at length
undertook to write out "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" and "Marmion" from
memory, so as not absolutely to lose my possession of them. This task I
achieved to a very considerable extent, and found the stirring,
chivalrous stories, and spirited, picturesque verse, a treasure of
refreshment, when all my poetical diet consisted of "L'Anthologie
francaise a l'Usage des Demoiselles," and Voltaire's "Henriade," which I
was compelled to learn by heart, and with the opening lines of which I
more than once startled the whole dormitory at midnight, sitting
suddenly up in my bed, and from the midst of perpetual slumbers loudly
proclaiming--

"Je chante ce heros qui regna sur la France,
Et par droit de conquete, et par droit de naissance."

More exciting reading was Madame Cottin's "Mathilde," of which I now got
hold for the first time, and devoured with delight, finishing it one
evening just before we were called to prayers, so that I wept bitterly
during my devotions, partly for the Norman princess and her Saracen
lover, and partly from remorse at my own sinfulness in not being able to
banish them from my thoughts while on my knees and saying my prayers.

But, to be sure, that baptism in the desert, with the only drop of water
they had to drink, seemed to me the very acme of religious fervor and
sacred self-sacrifice. I wonder what I should think of the book were I
to read it now, which Heaven forefend! The really powerful impression
made upon my imagination and feelings at this period, however, was by my
first reading of Lord Byron's poetry. The day on which I received that
revelation of the power of thought and language remained memorable to me
for many a day after.

I had occasionally re