’——­ is very wretched; and once I could not have helped taking on me all his griefs, and through him the griefs of his class; but now I drink only the wormwood of the minute, and that has always equal parts,—­a drop of sweet to a drop of bitter.  But I shall never be callous, never unable to understand home-sickness.  Am not I, too, one of the band who know not where to lay their heads?  Am I wise enough to hear such things?  Perhaps not; but happy enough, surely.  For that Power which daily makes me understand the value of the little wheat amid the field of tares, and shows me how the kingdom of heaven is sown in the earth like a grain of mustard-seed, is good to me, and bids me call unhappiness happy.’

* * * * *

    TO ——­

’March, 1842.—­My inward life has been more rich and deep, and of more calm and musical flow than ever before.  It seems to me that Heaven, whose course has ever been to cross-bias me, as Herbert said, is no niggard in its compensations.  I have indeed been forced to take up old burdens, from which I thought I had learned what they could teach; the pen has been snatched from my hand just as I most longed to use it; I have been forced to dissipate, when I most wished to concentrate; to feel the hourly presence of others’ mental wants, when, it seemed, I was just on the point of satisfying my own.  But a new page is turned, and an era begun, from which I am not yet sufficiently remote to describe it as I would.  I have lived a life, if only in the music I have heard, and one development seemed to follow another therein, as if bound together by destiny, and all things were done for me.  All minds, all scenes, have ministered to me.  Nature has seemed an ever-open secret; the Divine, a sheltering love; truth, an always-springing fountain; and my soul more alone, and less lonely, more hopeful, patient, and, above all, more gentle and humble in its living.  New minds have come to reveal themselves to me, though I do not wish it, for I feel myself inadequate to the ties already formed.  I have not strength or time to meet the thoughts of those I love already.  But these new have come with gifts too fair to be refused, and which have cheered my passive mind.’

* * * * *

’June, 1844.—­Last night, in the boat, I could not help thinking, each has something, none has enough.  I fear to want them all; and, through ages, if not forever, promises and beckons the life of reception, of renunciation.  Passing every seven days from one region to the other, the maiden grows weary of packing the trunk, yet blesses Thee, O rich God!’

Her letters at this period betray a pathetic alternation of feeling, between her aspiring for a rest in the absolute Centre, and her necessity of a perfect sympathy with her friends.  She writes to one of them:—­