e, and
infolding expectation in a robe of pearly sheen. Here is the
sweetness of strength,--honey to the valiant; on the other
side, its awfulness,--meat to the strong man. His sleep is
more powerful than the waking of myriads of other men. What
will he do when he has recruited his strength in this night's
slumber? What wilt thou sing of it, wild-haired child of the
lyre?

'I admire the heavy fall of the sleeper's luxuriant hair,
which reminds one of the final shutting down of night upon a
sullen twilight.

'The other figures, too, are full of augury, sad but
life-like, in its poetry. On the shield, how perfectly is the
expression of being struck home to the heart given! I wish I
could have that shield, in some shape. Only a single blow
was needed; the hand was sure, the breast shrinking, but
unresisting. Die, child of my affection, child of my old age!
Let the blood follow to the hilt, for it is the sword of the
Lord!

'In looking again, this shield is on the _Libica_, and that of
the _Persica_ represents conquest, not sacrifice.

'Over all these figures broods the spirit of prophecy. You
see their sternest deed is under the theocratic form. There is
pride in action, but no selfism in these figures.

'When I first came to Michel, I clung to the beautiful
Raphael, and feared his Druidical axe. But now, after the
sibyls of Michel, it is unsafe to look at those of Raphael;
for they seem weak, which is not so, only seems so, beside the
sterner ideal.

'The beauty of composition here is great, and you feel that
Michel's works are looked at fragment-wise in comparison. Here
the eye glides along so naturally, does so easily justice to
each part.'

LETTERS.

I fear the remark already made on that susceptibility to details
in art and nature which precluded the exercise of Margaret's sound
catholic judgment, must be extended to more than her connoisseurship.
She _had_ a sound judgment, on which, in conversation, she could fall
back, and anticipate and speak the best sense of the largest company.
But, left to herself, and in her correspondence, she was much the
victim of Lord Bacon's _idols of the cave_, or self-deceived by her
own phantasms. I have looked over volumes of her letters to me and
others. They are full of probity, talent, wit, friendship, charity,
and high aspiration. T