with such broad good nature, and on grounds of simple truth, as were not easy to set aside. She quoted from Manzoni’s Carmagnola, the lines: —
“Tolga il ciel che alcuno
Piu altamente di me pensi ch’io stesso.”
“God forbid that any one should conceive more highly of me than I myself.” Meantime, the tone of her journals is humble, tearful, religious, and rises easily into prayer.
I am obliged to an ingenious correspondent for the substance of the following account of this idiosyncrasy:—
Margaret was one of the few persons who looked
upon life as an art, and every person not merely as an
artist, but as a work of art. She looked upon herself as
a living statue, which should always stand on a polished
pedestal, with right accessories, and under the most
fitting lights. She would have been glad to have everybody
so live and act. She was annoyed when they did
not, and when they did not regard her from the point of
view which alone did justice to her. No one could be
more lenient in her judgments of those whom she saw to
be living in this light. Their faults were to be held as
“the disproportions of the ungrown giant.” But the
faults of persons who were unjustified by this ideal, were
odious. Unhappily, her constitutional self-esteem
sometimes blinded the eyes that should have seen that an
idea lay at the bottom of some lives which she did not
quite so readily comprehend as beauty; that truth had
other manifestations than those which engaged her
natural sympathies; that sometimes the soul illuminated
