Already, too, at this time, each of the main problems of human life
had been closely scanned and interrogated by her, and some of them had
been much earlier settled. A worshipper of beauty, why could not she
also have been beautiful?--of the most radiant sociality, why should
not she have been so placed, and so decorated, as to have led the
fairest and highest? In her journal is a bitter sentence, whose
meaning I cannot mistake: 'Of a disposition that requires the most
refined, the most exalted tenderness, without charms to inspire
it:--poor Mignon! fear not the transition through death; no penal
fires can have in store worse torments than thou art familiar with
already.'

In the month of May, she writes:--

'When all things are blossoming, it seems so strange not to
blossom too; that the quick thought within cannot remould its
tenement. Man is the slowest aloes, and I am such a shabby
plant, of such coarse tissue. I hate not to be beautiful, when
all around is so.'

Again, after recording a visit to a family, whose taste and culture,
united to the most liberal use of wealth, made the most agreeable of
homes, she writes:

'Looking out on the wide view, I felt the blessings of my
comparative freedom. I stand in no false relations. Who else
is so happy? Here are these fair, unknowing children envying
the depth of my mental life. They feel withdrawn by sweet