her intellectual power and moral worth. Faults she has; but to me they appear very trivial weighed in the balance against her excellences."
"Your account of Mr. A——— tallies exactly with Miss M———'s. She, too, said that placidity and mildness (rather than originality and power) were his external characteristics. She described him as a combination of the antique Greek sage with the European modern man of science. Perhaps it was mere perversity in me to get the notion that torpid veins, and a cold, slow-beating heart, lay under his marble outside. But he is a materialist: he serenely denies us our hope of immortality, and quietly blots from man's future Heaven and the Life to come. That is why a savour of bitterness seasoned my feeling towards him.
"All you say of Mr. Thackeray is most graphic and characteristic. He stirs in me both sorrow and anger. Why should he lead so harassing a life? Why should his mocking tongue so perversely deny the better feelings of his better moods?"
For some time, whenever she was well enough in health and spirits, she had been employing herself upon "Villette;" but she was frequently unable to write, and was both grieved and angry with herself for her inability. In February, she writes as follows to Mr. Smith:—
"Something you say about going to London; but the words are dreamy, and fortunately I am not obliged to hear or answer them. London and summer are
