blending of sentiment and of wisdom in her is most remarkable; and her taste is as fine as her prudence.  I think her the most brilliant talker of the day.  She has a quick and comprehensive wit, a firm command of her thoughts, and a speech to win the ear of the most cultivated.”

In her own classes Margaret was very successful, and thus in a letter sums up the results:—­

’I am still quite unwell, and all my pursuits and propensities have a tendency to make my head worse.  It is but a bad head,—­as bad as if I were a great man!  I am not entitled to so bad a head by anything I have done; but I flatter myself it is very interesting to suffer so much, and a fair excuse for not writing pretty letters, and saying to my friends the good things I think about them.

’I was so desirous of doing all I could, that I took a great deal more upon myself than I was able to bear.  Yet now that the twenty-five weeks of incessant toil are over, I rejoice in it all, and would not have done an iota less.  I have fulfilled all my engagements faithfully; have acquired more power of attention, self-command, and fortitude; have acted in life as I thought I would in my lonely meditations; and have gained some knowledge of means.  Above all,—­blessed be the Father of our spirits!—­my aims are the same as they were in the happiest flight of youthful fancy.  I have learned too, at last, to rejoice in all past pain, and to see that my spirit has been judiciously tempered for its work.  In future I may sorrow, but can I ever despair?

’The beginning of the winter was forlorn.  I was always ill; and often thought I might not live, though the work was but just begun.  The usual disappointments, too, were about me.  Those from whom aid was expected failed, and others who aided did not understand my aims.  Enthusiasm for the things loved best fled when I seemed to be buying and selling them.  I could not get the proper point of view, and could not keep a healthful state of mind.  Mysteriously a gulf seemed to have opened between me and most intimate friends, and for the first time for many years I was entirely, absolutely, alone.  Finally, my own character and designs lost all romantic interest, and I felt vulgarized, profaned, forsaken,—­though obliged to smile brightly and talk wisely all the while.  But these clouds at length passed away.

’And now let me try to tell you what has been done.  To one class I taught the German language, and thought it good success, when, at the end of three months, they could read twenty pages of German at a lesson, and very well.  This class, of course, was not interesting, except in the way of observation and analysis of language.

’With more advanced pupils I read, in twenty-four weeks, Schiller’s Don Carlos, Artists, and Song of the Bell, besides giving a sort of general lecture on Schiller; Goethe’s Hermann and Dorothea, Goetz von Berlichingen,