te beauty. The darkling forest would have grown around them,
with the stars glittering from the midsummer sky: the flowers at the
queen's feet, and the boughs and foliage about her, would have been
peopled with gambolling sprites and fays. They were dwelling in the
artist's mind no doubt, and would have been developed by that patient,
faithful, admirable genius: but the busy brain stopped working, the
skilful hand fell lifeless, the loving, honest heart ceased to beat.
What was she to have been--that fair Titania--when perfected by the
patient skill of the poet, who in imagination saw the sweet innocent
figure, and with tender courtesy and caresses, as it were, posed and
shaped and traced the fair form? Is there record kept anywhere of
fancies conceived, beautiful, unborn? Some day will they assume form in
some yet undeveloped light? If our bad unspoken thoughts are registered
against us, and are written in the awful account, will not the good
thoughts unspoken, the love and tenderness, the pity, beauty, charity,
which pass through the breast, and cause the heart to throb with
silent good, find a remembrance too? A few weeks more, and this lovely
offspring of the poet's conception would have been complete--to charm
the world with its beautiful mirth. May there not be some sphere unknown
to us where it may have an existence? They say our words, once out of
our lips, go travelling in omne oevum, reverberating for ever and ever.
If our words, why not our thoughts? If the Has Been, why not the Might
Have Been?

Some day our spirits may be permitted to walk in galleries of fancies
more wondrous and beautiful than any achieved works which at present we
see, and our minds to behold and delight in masterpieces which poets'
and artists' minds have fathered and conceived only.

With a feeling much akin to that with which I looked upon the
friend's--the admirable artist's--unfinished work, I can fancy many
readers turning to the last pages which were traced by Charlotte
Bronte's hand. Of the multitude that have read her books, who has not
known and deplored the tragedy of her family, her own most sad and
untimely fate? Which of her readers has not become her friend? Who that
has known her books has not admired the artist's noble English, the
burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at
wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the passionate
honor, so to speak, of the woman? What a story i