seen!  Yet she readily changed from gay to grave, and loved better the serious talk which opened the depths of life.  Describing a conversation in relation to Christianity, with a friend of strong mind, who told her he had found, in this religion, a home for his best and deepest thoughts, she says—­’ Ah! what a pleasure ‘to meet with such a daring, yet realizing, mind as his!’ But her catholic taste found satisfaction in intercourse with persons quite different from herself in opinions and tendencies, as the following letter, written in her twentieth year, will indicate: 

* * * * *

    ’I was very happy, although greatly restrained by the
    apprehension of going a little too far with these persons of
    singular refinement and settled opinions.

’However, I believe I did pretty well, though I did make one or two little mistakes, when most interested; but I was not so foolish as to try to retrieve them.  One occasion more particularly, when Mr. G——­, after going more fully into his poetical opinions than I could have expected, stated his sentiments:  first, that Wordsworth had, in truth, guided, or, rather, completely vivified the poetry of this age; secondly, that ’t was his influence which had, in reality, given all his better individuality to Byron.  He recurred again and again to this opinion, con amore, and seemed to wish much for an answer; but I would not venture, though ’twas hard for me to forbear, I knew so well what I thought.  Mr. G——­’s Wordsworthianism, however, is excellent; his beautiful simplicity of taste, and love of truth, have preserved him from any touch of that vague and imbecile enthusiasm, which has enervated almost all the exclusive and determined admirers of the great poet whom I have known in these parts.  His reverence, his feeling, are thoroughly intelligent.  Everything in his mind is well defined; and his horror of the vague, and false, nay, even (suppose another horror here, for grammar’s sake) of the startling and paradoxical, have their beauty.  I think I could know Mr. G——­ long, and see him perpetually, without any touch of satiety; such variety is made by the very absence of pretension, and the love of truth.  I found much amusement in leading him to sketch the scenes and persons which Lockhart portrays in such glowing colors, and which he, too, has seen with the eye of taste, but how different!’

* * * * *

Our friend was well aware that her forte was in conversation.  Here she felt at home.  Here she felt her power, and the excitement which the presence of living persons brought, gave all her faculties full activity ‘After all,’ she says, in a letter,

    ’this writing is mighty dead.  Oh, for my dear old Greeks, who
    talked everything—­not to shine as in the Parisian saloons,
    but to learn, to teach, to vent the heart, to clear the mind!’