I received your letter yesterday, and must exult in my self-command, for Mrs. Jameson was with me, and I did not touch it till she was gone.  Thank you first of all for Spenser; that is poetry!  I was much benefited as well as delighted by it.  Considering the power of poetry to raise one’s mind and soul into the noblest moods, I do not think it is held in sufficient reverence nowadays; the bards of old were greater people in their society than our modern ones are; to be sure, modern poetry is not all of a purely elevating character, and poets are paid, besides being asked out to dinner, which the bards always were.  I think the tone of a good deal of Campbell’s “Pleasures of Hope” very noble, and some of Mrs. Hemans’s things are very beautiful in sentiment as well as expression.  But then, all that order of writing is so feeble compared with the poetry of our old masters, who do not so much appeal to our feelings as to our reason and imagination combined.  I do not believe that to be sublime is in the power of a woman, any more than to be logical; and Mrs. Hemans, who is neither, writes charmingly, and one loves her as a Christian woman even more than one admires her as a writer.

Yes, it is very charming that the dove, the favorite type of gentleness and tenderness and “harmlessness,” should have such a swift and vigorous power of flight; suaviter—­fortiter, a good combination.

We are having the most tempestuous weather; A——­ is horribly frightened, and I am rather awed.  I got the encyclopaedia to-night to study the cause of the equinoctial gales, which I thought we should both be the better for knowing, but could find nothing about them; can you tell me of any book or treatise upon this subject?

My dear H——­, shut your eyes while you read this, because if you don’t, they’ll never shut again.  Constance is what I am to play for my benefit.  I am horribly frightened; it is a cruel weight to lay upon my shoulders:  however, there is nothing for it but doing my best, and leaving the rest to fate.  I almost think now I could do Lady Macbeth better.  I am like poor little Arthur, who begged to have his tongue cut off rather than have his eyes put out; that last scene of Constance—­think what an actress one should be to do it justice!  Pray for me.

     And so the Poles are crushed! what a piteous horror!  Will there
     never come a day of retribution for this!

Mrs. Jameson came and sat with me some time yesterday evening, and read me a good deal of her work on Shakespeare’s female characters; they are very pleasing sketches—­outlines—­but her criticism and analysis are rather graceful than profound or powerful.  Tuesday next my mother and I spend the evening with her; Wednesday, we dine at Sir John Macdonald’s; Thursday, I act Mrs. Haller; Friday, we have an evening party at home; Saturday, I play Beatrice; Monday,