by myself, leaving our gentlemen at table, and my mother and Lady Francis in the drawing-room.  How I flew along by the syringa bushes, brushing their white fragrant blossoms down in showers as I ran, till I came to that dark cedar hall, with its circle of giant trees, whose wide-sweeping branches spread, at it were, a halo of darkness all round it!  Through the space at the top, like the open dome of some great circular temple, such as the Pantheon of Rome, the violet-colored sky and its starry worlds looked down.  Sometimes the pure radiant moon and one fair attendant star would seem to pause above me in the dark framework of the great tree-tops.  That place seemed peopled with spirits to me; and while I was there I had the intensest delight in the sort of all but conscious certainty that it was so.  Curiously enough, I never remember feeling the slightest nervousness while I was there, but rather an immense excitement in the idea of such invisible companionship; but as soon as I had emerged from the magic circle of the huge black cedar trees, all my fair visions vanished, and, as though under a spell, I felt perfectly possessed with terror, and rushed home again like the wind, fancying I heard following footsteps all the way I went.  The moon seemed to swing to and fro in the sky, and every twisted tree and fantastic shadow that lay in my path made me start aside like a shying horse.  I could have fancied they made grimaces and gestures at me, like the rocks and roots in Retsch’s etchings of the Brocken; and I used to reach the house with cheeks flaming with nervous excitement, and my heart thumping a great deal more with fear than with my wild run home; and then I walked with the utmost external composure of demure propriety into the drawing-room, as who should say, “Thy servant went no whither,” to any inquiry that might be made as to my absence....

It seems to me that you would be a poet but for your analyzing, dissecting, inquiring, and doubting mental tendency.  Your truth is not a matter of intuition, but of demonstration; and when you get beyond demonstrability, then nothing remains to you but doubt....  God bless you, dear!

I am yours ever affectionately,
F. A. K.

Monday, December 5th.—­ ...  My father is worse again to-day.  Ohime!  His state is most precarious, and this relapse very alarming.  It is dreadful to see him drag himself about, and hear his feeble voice.  Oh, my dear, dear Father!  Heaven preserve you to us!

Tuesday, 6th.—­My father is much worse.  How terrible this is!...  Dall met me on the stairs this morning, and gave me a miserable account of him; he had just been bled, and that had somewhat relieved him.  I went and sat with him while my mother drove out in the carriage.  I stayed a long while with him, and he seemed a little better....  My father’s two doctors have returned again, and paid him two visits daily.  I read Daru all the evening.

     Wednesday, 7th.—­ ...  So I am to play Belvidera on Monday, and
     Bianca on Wednesday.  That will be hard work; Bianca is terrible.