striking one. The
relation existing between herself and her sister is described in
"Dorothea and Celia,"--no intellectual affinity, but strong family
affection. The repression of these early years she afterwards refers to
in saying,--

"You may try, but you can never imagine, what it is to have a man's
force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a
girl."

During her early youth she writes thus to a friend:--

"I really feel for you, sacrificing as you are your own tastes and
comforts for the pleasure of others, and that in a manner the most
trying to rebellious flesh and blood; for I verily believe that in
most cases it requires more of a martyr's spirit to endure with
patience and cheerfulness daily crossings and interruptions of our
petty desires and pursuits and to rejoice in them, if they can be
made to conduce to God's glory and our own sanctification, than
even to lay down our lives for the truth."

Deep religious feeling was one of the most striking characteristics of
this period of her youth. On her nineteenth birthday she writes:--

"May the Lord give me such an insight into what is truly good that
I may not rest contented with making Christianity a mere addendum
to my pursuits, or with tacking it as a mere fringe to my garments!
May I seek to be sanctified wholly!"

This religious feeling she carried with her throughout life, although
she soon left behind her the tenets and creeds of the church in which
she was born and for which she had so strong an affection. In later
life, although placing herself entirely outside of historic
Christianity, and becoming a rationalist of the rationalists, the fervor
of strong religious feeling never left her, and to her latest days she
loved to read the Scriptures and to feel the glow of devotional feeling
which belonged to her nature. The strong and powerful motive of her life
in youth and age was the intense desire to aid and help the world, for
which she felt a compassion so strong as to remind one of the
descriptions given of Buddha in Eastern song and story. In every period
of her life, in her most private letters and journals, this burden of
the world's sorrow seemed to find expression, and her pitying love was
almost Christ-like in its tenderness.

In forming an estimate of the woman we must never lose sight of this
predominating feeling. Next to it in intensity is to