I am tempted, by my recollection of the pleasure it gave her, to insert here a little poem, addressed to Margaret by one of her friends, on the beautiful imaginative picture in the gallery of 1840, called “The Dream.”

  “A youth, with gentle brow and tender cheek,
    Dreams in a place so silent, that no bird,
  No rustle of the leaves his slumbers break;
    Only soft tinkling from the stream is heard,
  As in bright little waves it comes to greet
  The beauteous One, and play upon his feet.

  “On a low bank, beneath the thick shade thrown,
    Soft gleams over his brown hair are flitting,
  His golden plumes, bending, all lovely shone;
    It seemed an angel’s home where he was sitting,
  Erect, beside, a silver lily grew,
  And over all the shadow its sweet beauty threw.

  “Dreams he of life?  O, then a noble maid
    Toward him floats, with eyes of starry light,
  In richest robes all radiantly arrayed,
    To be his ladye and his dear delight. 
  Ah no! the distance shows a winding stream;
  No lovely ladye moves, no starry eyes do gleam.

  “Cold is the air, and cold the mountains blue;
    The banks are brown, and men are lying there,
  Meagre and old; O, what have they to do
    With joyous visions of a youth so fair? 
  He must not ever sleep as they are sleeping,
  Onward through life he must be ever sweeping.

  “Let the pale glimmering distance pass away;
    Why in the twilight art thou slumbering there? 
  Wake, and come forth into triumphant day;
    Thy life and deeds must all be great and fair. 
  Canst thou not from the lily learn true glory,
  Pure, lofty, lowly?—­such should be thy story.

  “But no! thou lovest the deep-eyed Past,
    And thy heart clings to sweet remembrances;
  In dim cathedral aisles thou’lt linger last,
    And fill thy mind with flitting fantasies. 
  But know, dear One, the world is rich to-day,
  And the unceasing God gives glory forth alway.”

I have said she was never weary of studying Michel Angelo and Raphael; and here are some manuscript “notes,” which she sent me one day, containing a clear expression of her feeling toward each of these masters, after she had become tolerably familiar with their designs, as far as prints could carry her:—­

’On seeing such works as these of Michel Angelo, we feel the need of a genius scarcely inferior to his own, which should invent some word, or some music, adequate to express our feelings, and relieve us from the Titanic oppression.

’"Greatness,” “majesty,” “strength,”—­to these words we had before thought we attached their proper meaning.  But now we repent that they ever passed our lips.  Created anew by the genius of this man, we would create language anew, and give him a word of response worthy his sublime profession of faith.  Could