r. Dwight preached in the morning and Mr. Chickering
in the afternoon.

September 11th she marked with a white stone and kept ever after as one
of the chief festal days of her life, but of the reason why there is
here no record. The diary for the rest of the year is blank with the
exception of a single leaf which contains these sentences:

"Celle qui a besoin d'admirer ce qu'elle aime, celle, don't le jugement
est penetrant, bien que son imagination exaltee, il n'y a pour elle
qu'un objet dans l'univers."

"Celui qu'on aime, est le vengeur des fautes qu'on a commis sur cette
terre; la Divinite lui prete son pouvoir."

MAD. DE STAEL.

* * * * *

III.

Her Views of Love and Courtship. Visit of her Sister and Child. Letters.
Sickness and Death of Friends. Ill-Health. Undergoes a Surgical
Operation. Her Fortitude. Study of German. Fenelon.

The records of the next year and a half are very abundant, in the form
of notes, letters, verses and journals; but they are mostly of too
private a character to furnish materials for this narrative, belonging
to what she called "the deep story of my heart." They breathe the
sweetness and sparkle with the morning dew of the affections; and while
some of them are full of fun and playful humor, others glow with all
the impassioned earnestness of her nature, and others still with deep
religious feeling. She wrote:

My heart seems to me somewhat like a very full church at the close of
the services--the great congregation of my affections trying to find
their way out and crowding and hindering each other in the general rush
for the door. Don't you see them--the young ones scampering first down
the aisle, and the old and grave and stately ones coming with proud
dignity after them?... I feel now that "dans les mysteres de notre
nature aimer, _encore aimer,_ est ce qui nous est reste de notre
heritage celeste," and oh, how I thank God for my blessed portion of
this celestial endowment!

Love in a word was to her, after religion, the holiest and most
wonderful reality of life; and in the presence of its mysteries she
was--to use her own comparison--"like a child standing upon the
seashore, watching for the onward rush of the waves, venturing himself
close to the water's edge, holding his breath and wooing their approach,
and then, as they come dashing in, retreating with laughter and mock
fear, only to return to tempt them anew." Her only solicitude wa