nverted into a pleasure, and is pursued with
an avidity which will infallibly secure success. It is a sad mistake
to frown upon such efforts as a waste of time.

While in the convent, she, for the first time, partook of the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Her spirit was most deeply impressed
and overawed by the sacredness of the ceremony. During several weeks
previous to her reception of this solemn ordinance, by solitude,
self-examination, and prayer, she endeavored to prepare herself for
that sacred engagement, which she deemed the pledge of her union to
God, and of her eternal felicity. When the hour arrived, her feelings
were so intensely excited that she wept convulsively, and she was
entirely incapable of walking to the altar. She was borne in the arms
of two of the nuns. This depth of emotion was entirely unaffected, and
secured for her the peculiar reverence of the sacred sisters.

That spirit of pensive reverie, so dangerous and yet so fascinating,
to which she loved to surrender herself, was peculiarly in harmony
with all the influences with which she was surrounded in the convent,
and constituted the very soul of the piety of its inmates. She was
encouraged by the commendations of all the sisters to deliver her mind
up to the dominion of these day-dreams, with whose intoxicating power
every heart is more or less familiar. She loved to retire to the
solitude of the cloisters, when the twilight was deepening into
darkness, and alone, with measured steps, to pace to and fro,
listening to the monotonous echoes of her own footfall, which alone
disturbed the solemn silence. At the tomb of a departed sister she
would often linger, and, indulging in those melancholy meditations
which had for her so many charms, long for her own departure to the
bosom of her heavenly Father, where she might enjoy that perfect
happiness for which, at times, her spirit glowed with such intense
aspirations.

At the close of the year Jane left the peaceful retreat where she had
enjoyed so much, and where she had received so many impressions never
to be effaced. Her parents, engrossed with care, were unable to pay
that attention to their child which her expanding mind required, and
she was sent to pass her thirteenth year with her paternal grandmother
and her aunt Angelieu. Her grandmother was a dignified lady of much
refinement of mind and gracefulness of demeanor, who laid great stress
upon all the courtesies of life and the elegances