“In all whose music, the pathetic minor
  Our ears will cross—­”

and when she sang or spoke, her eyes had often the expression of one looking in at her thought, not out at her companion.

Then there was C——­, all animated and radiant with joyful interest in life,—­seeing with ready eye the beauty of Nature and of Thought,—­entering with quick sympathy into all human interest, taking readily everything which belonged to her, and dropping with sure instinct whatever suited her not.  Unknown to her was struggle, conflict, crisis; she grew up harmonious as the flower, drawing nutriment from earth and air,—­from “common things which round us lie,” and equally from the highest thoughts and inspirations.

Shall I also speak of D——­, whose beauty had a half-voluptuous character, from those ripe red lips, those ringlets overflowing the well-rounded shoulders, and the hazy softness of those large eyes?  Or of E——­, her companion, beautiful too, but in a calmer, purer style,—­with eye from which looked forth self-possession, truth and fortitude?  Others, well worth notice, I must not notice now.

But among the young men who surrounded Margaret, a like variety prevailed.  One was to her interesting, on account of his quick, active intellect, and his contempt for shows and pretences; for his inexhaustible wit, his exquisite taste, his infinitely varied stores of information, and the poetic view which he took of life, painting it with Rembrandt depths of shadow and bursts of light.  Another she gladly went to for his compact, thoroughly considered views of God and the world,—­for his culture, so much more deep and rich than any other we could find here,—­for his conversation, opening in systematic form new fields of thought.  Yet men of strong native talent, and rich character, she also liked well to know, however deficient in culture, knowledge, or power of utterance.  Each was to her a study, and she never rested till she had found the bottom of every mind,—­till she had satisfied herself of its capacity and currents,—­measuring it with her sure line, as

  —­“All human wits
  Are measured, but a few.”

It was by her singular gift of speech that she cast her spells and worked her wonders in this little circle.  Full of thoughts and full of words; capable of poetic improvisation, had there not been a slight overweight of a tendency to the tangible and real; capable of clear, complete, philosophic statement, but for the strong tendency to life which melted down evermore in its lava-current the solid blocks of thought; she was yet, by these excesses, better fitted for the arena of conversation.  Here she found none adequate for the equal encounter; when she laid her lance in rest, every champion must go down before it.  How fluent her wit, which, for hour after hour, would furnish best entertainment, as she described scenes where she had lately been, or persons she had lately