’In daily life I could never hope to be an unfailing fountain of energy and bounteous love.  My health is frail; my earthly life is shrunk to a scanty rill; I am little better than an aspiration, which the ages will reward, by empowering me to incessant acts of vigorous beauty.  But now it is well with me to be with those who do not suffer overmuch to have me suffer.  It is best for me to serve where I can better bear to fall short.  I could visit ——­ more nobly than in daily life, through the soul of our souls.  When she named me her Priestess, that name made me perfectly happy.  Long has been my consecration; may I not meet those I hold dear at the altar?  How would I pile up the votive offerings, and crowd the fires with incense?  Life might be full and fair; for, in my own way, I could live for my friends.’ * *

* * * * *

’Dec. 8th, 1840.—­My book of amusement has been the Evenings of St. Petersburg.  I do not find the praises bestowed on it at all exaggerated.  Yet De Maistre is too logical for me.  I only catch a thought here and there along the page.  There is a grandeur even in the subtlety of his mind.  He walks with a step so still, that, but for his dignity, it would be stealthy, yet with brow erect and wide, eye grave and deep.  He is a man such as I have never known before.’ * *

’I went to see Mrs. Wood in the Somnambula.  Nothing could spoil this opera, which expresses an ecstasy, a trance of feeling, better than anything I ever heard.  I have loved every melody in it for years, and it was happiness to listen to the exquisite modulations as they flowed out of one another, endless ripples on a river deep, wide and strewed with blossoms.  I never have known any one more to be loved than Bellini.  No wonder the Italians make pilgrimages to his grave.  In him thought and feeling flow always in one tide; he never divides himself.  He is as melancholy as he is sweet; yet his melancholy is not impassioned, but purely tender.’

* * * * *

    ’Dec. 15, 1840.—­I have not time to write out as I should
    this sweet story of Melissa, but here is the outline:—­

’More than four years ago she received an injury, which caused her great pain in the spine, and went to the next country town to get medical advice.  She stopped at the house of a poor blacksmith, an acquaintance only, and has never since been able to be moved.  Her mother and sister come by turns to take care of her.  She cannot help herself in any way, but is as completely dependent as an infant.  The blacksmith and his wife gave her the best room in their house, have ever since ministered to her as to a child of their own, and, when people pity them for having to bear such a burthen, they say, “It