But she was striving, also, to use her own words, ’to be patient to the very depths of the heart, to expect no hasty realizations, not to make her own plan her law of life, but to learn the law and plan of God.’  She adds, however:—­

’What heaven it must be to have the happy sense of accomplishing something, and to feel the glow of action without exhausted weariness!  Surely the race would have worn itself out by corrosion, if men in all ages had suffered, as we now do, from the consciousness of an unattained Ideal.’

Extracts from journals will best reveal her state of mind.

’I have a dim consciousness of what the terrible experiences must be by which the free poetic element is harmonized with the spirit of religion.  In their essence and their end these are one, but rarely in actual existence.  I would keep what was pure and noble in my old native freedom, with that consciousness of falling below the best convictions which now binds me to the basest of mankind, and find some new truth that shall reconcile and unite them.  Once it seemed to me, that my heart was so capable of goodness, my mind of clearness, that all should acknowledge and claim me as a friend.  But now I see that these impulses were prophetic of a yet distant period.  The “intensity” of passion, which so often unfits me for life, or, rather, for life here, is to be moderated, not into dulness or languor, but a gentler, steadier energy.’

’The stateliest, strongest vessel must sometimes be brought into port to rent.  If she will not submit to be fastened to the dock, stripped of her rigging, and scrutinized by unwashed artificers, she may spring a leak when riding most proudly on the subject wave.  Norway fir nor English oak can resist forever the insidious assaults of the seemingly conquered ocean.  The man who clears the barnacles from the keel is more essential than he who hoists the pennant on the lofty mast.’

* * * * *

’A week of more suffering than I have had for a long time,—­from Sunday to Sunday,—­headache night and day!  And not only there has been no respite, but it has been fixed in one spot—­between the eyebrows!—­what does that promise?—­till it grew real torture.  Then it has been depressing to be able to do so little, when there was so much I had at heart to do.  It seems that the black and white guardians, depicted on the Etrurian monuments, and in many a legend, are always fighting for my life.  Whenever I have any cherished purpose, either outward obstacles swarm around, which the hand that would be drawing beautiful lines must be always busy in brushing away, or comes this great vulture, and fastens his iron talons on the brain.

’But at such times the soul rises up, like some fair child in whom sleep has been mistaken for death, a living flower in the dark tomb.  He casts aside his shrouds and bands, rosy