d warmer breath,--its gentle,
down-looking shades. Sadness in some is intolerably ungraceful
and oppressive; it affects one like a cold rainy day in
June or September, when all pleasure departs with the sun;
everything seems out of place and irrelative to the time; the
clouds are fog, the atmosphere leaden,--but 'tis not so with
you.'

Of her own truthfulness to her friends, which led her frankly to speak
to them of their faults or dangers, her correspondence gives constant
examples.

The first is from a letter of later date than properly belongs to this
chapter, but is so wholly in her spirit of candor that I insert it
here. It is from a letter written in 1843.

'I have been happy in the sight of your pure design, of the
sweetness and serenity of your mind. In the inner sanctuary we
met. But I shall say a few blunt words, such as were frequent
in the days of intimacy, and, if they are needless, you
will let them fall to the ground. Youth is past, with its
passionate joys and griefs, its restlessness, its vague
desires. You have chosen your path, you have rounded out your
lot, your duties are before you. _Now_ beware the mediocrity
that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and
interest, its dulness of fancy, its too external life, and
mental thinness. Remember the limitations that threaten
every professional man, only to be guarded against by great
earnestness and watchfulness. So take care of yourself, and
let not the intellect more than the spirit be quenched.

* * * * *

'It is such a relief to me to be able to speak to you upon a
subject which I thought would never lie open between us. Now
there will be no place which does not lie open to the light. I
can always say what I feel. And the way in which you took it,
so like yourself, so manly and noble, gives me the assurance
that I shall have the happiness of seeing in you that
symmetry, that conformity in the details of life with the
highest aims, of which I have sometimes despaired. How much
higher, dear friend, is "the mind, the music breathing from
the" _life_, than anything we can say! Character is higher
than intellect; this I have long felt to be true; may we both
live as if we knew it.

* * 'I hope and believe we may be yet very much to each other.
Imperfect as I am, I feel my