unwilling to acknowledge love for its superior, must) the devil.  That is the legend of Lucifer, the star that would not own its centre.  Yet, while it is unconscious, it is not devilish, only daemoniac.  In nature, we trace it in all volcanic workings, in a boding position of lights, in whispers of the wind, which has no pedigree; in deceitful invitations of the water, in the sullen rock, which never shall find a voice, and in the shapes of all those beings who go about seeking what they may devour.  We speak of a mystery, a dread; we shudder, but we approach still nearer, and a part of our nature listens, sometimes answers to this influence, which, if not indestructible, is at least indissolubly linked with the existence of matter.

’In genius, and in character, it works, as you say, instinctively; it refuses to be analyzed by the understanding, and is most of all inaccessible to the person who possesses it.  We can only say, I have it, he has it.  You have seen it often in the eyes of those Italian faces you like.  It is most obvious in the eye.  As we look on such eyes, we think on the tiger, the serpent, beings who lurk, glide, fascinate, mysteriously control.  For it is occult by its nature, and if it could meet you on the highway, and be familiarly known as an acquaintance, could not exist.  The angels of light do not love, yet they do not insist on exterminating it.

’It has given rise to the fables of wizard, enchantress, and the like; these beings are scarcely good, yet not necessarily bad.  Power tempts them.  They draw their skills from the dead, because their being is coeval with that of matter, and matter is the mother of death.’

In later days, she allowed herself sometimes to dwell sadly on the resistances which she called her fate, and remarked, that ’all life that has been or could be natural to me, is invariably denied.’

She wrote long afterwards:—­

’My days at Milan were not unmarked.  I have known some happy hours, but they all lead to sorrow, and not only the cups of wine, but of milk, seem drugged with poison, for me.  It does not seem to be my fault, this destiny.  I do not court these things,—­they come.  I am a poor magnet, with power to be wounded by the bodies I attract.’

TEMPERAMENT.

I said that Margaret had a broad good sense, which brought her near to all people.  I am to say that she had also a strong temperament, which is that counter force which makes individuality, by driving all the powers in the direction of the ruling thought or feeling, and, when it is allowed full sway, isolating them.  These two tendencies were always invading each other, and now one and now the other carried the day.  This alternation perplexes the biographer, as it did the observer.  We contradict on the second page what we affirm on the first:  and I remember how often I was compelled to correct my impressions of her character when living; for after I had settled it once for all that she wanted this or that perception, at our next interview she would say with emphasis the very word.