' She adds, however:--
'What heaven it must be to have the happy sense of
accomplishing something, and to feel the glow of action
without exhausted weariness! Surely the race would have worn
itself out by corrosion, if men in all ages had suffered, as
we now do, from the consciousness of an unattained Ideal.'
Extracts from journals will best reveal her state of mind.
'I have a dim consciousness of what the terrible experiences
must be by which the free poetic element is harmonized with
the spirit of religion. In their essence and their end these
are one, but rarely in actual existence. I would keep what
was pure and noble in my old native freedom, with that
consciousness of falling below the best convictions which now
binds me to the basest of mankind, and find some new truth
that shall reconcile and unite them. Once it seemed to
me, that my heart was so capable of goodness, my mind of
clearness, that all should acknowledge and claim me as a
friend. But now I see that these impulses were prophetic of a
yet distant period. The "intensity" of passion, which so often
unfits me for life, or, rather, for _life here_, is to
be moderated, not into dulness or languor, but a gentler,
steadier energy.
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