A.—— observed in reference to some of her friends who had gone over to the Roman Catholic Church, “that the peace and comfort which they had sought and found in that mode of faith was like the drugged sleep in comparison with the natural sleep: necessary, healing perhaps, where there is disease and unrest, not otherwise.” [Illustration] 24. “A poet,” says Coleridge, “ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to your imagination than your memory.” This advice is even more applicable to the painter, but true perhaps in its application to all artists. Raphael and Mozart were, in this sense, great borrowers. [Illustration] 25. “What is the difference between being good and being bad? the good do not yield to temptation and the bad do.” This is often the distinction between the good and the bad in regard to act and deed; but it does not constitute the difference between _being_ good and _being_ bad. [Illustration] 26. The Italians say (in one of their characteristic proverbs) _Sospetto licenzia Fede_. Lord Bacon interprets the saying “as if suspicion did give a passport to faith,” which is somewhat obscure and ambiguous. It means, that suspicion discharges us from the duty of good faith; and in this, its original sense, it is, like many of the old Italian proverbs, worldly wise and profoundly immoral. [Illustration] 27. IT was well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia, that “speech was like cloth of arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure, whereas in thoughts they lie but in packs” (_i. e._ rolled up or packed up). Dryden had evidently this passage in his mind when he wrote those beautiful lines: “Speech is the light, the morning of the mind; It spreads the beauteous images abroad, Which else lie furled and shrouded in the soul.” Here the comparison of Themistocles, happy in itself, is expanded into a vivid poetical image. [Illustration] 28. “Those are the killing griefs that do not speak,” is true of some, not all characters. There are natures in which the killing grief finds utterance while it kills; moods in which we cry aloud, “as the beast crieth, expansive not appealing.” That is my own nature: so in grief or in joy, I say as the birds sing: “Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual verstummt, Gab mir ein Got zu sagen was ich leide!” [Illustration] 29. Blessed is the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted _from_ the world!—yet more blessed and more dear the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted _in_ the world! [Illustration] 30. Everything that ever has been, from the beginning of the world till now, belongs to us, is ours, is even a part of us. We belong to the future, and shall be a part of it. Therefore the sympathies of _all_ are in the past; only the poet and the prophet sympathise with the future.