that one mood. The last lines of the last sonnet are a fit motto for Boccaccio’s dream.
‘In copying both together, I find the prose of the Englishman worthy of the verse of the Italian. It is a happiness to see such marble beauty in the halls of a contemporary.
‘How fine it is to see the terms “onesto,” “gentile,” used in their original sense and force.
‘Soft, solemn day!
Where earth and heaven together seem to meet,
I have been blest to greet
From human thought a kindred sway;
In thought these stood
So near the simple Good,
That what we nobleness and honor call,
They viewed as honesty, the common dower of all.’
Margaret was reading, in these weeks, the Four Books
of Confucius, the Desatir, some of Taylor’s translations
from the Greek, a work on Scandinavian Mythology,
Mœhler’s Symbolism, Fourier’s Noveau Monde
Industriel, and Landor’s Pentameron, — but she says, in her
journal, ‘No book is good enough to read in the open
air, among these mountains; even the best seem partial,
civic, limiting, instead of being, as man’s voice should
be, a tone higher than nature’s.’
And again: — ‘This morning came ——’s letter, announcing Sterling’s death: —
‘“Weep for Dedalus all that is fairest.”
‘The news was very sad: Sterling did so earnestly wish to do a man’s work, and had done so small a portion of his own. This made me feel how fast my years are flitting by, and nothing done. Yet these few beautiful
