I cannot insist enough on the benefit resulting for us all from the presence of Fräulein Lavater in our midst. She came among us as a true angel of peace, bringing harmony into the strange mass of heterogeneous elements--sometimes most conflicting and discordant--of which our household was composed. Never were we so happy, either as children or a little later on, as when sitting with her, close up beside her chair, listening to all she had to tell us. Her memory was so excellent and had been so assiduously cultivated, that her mind was a perfect treasure-house of all that is best and noblest in the literature of the world. She was never idle; her fingers always occupied with some pretty piece of needlework whilst she talked, and when alone, they worked on indefatigably, her eyes meanwhile fixed on the book that lay open before her. It was owing to this praiseworthy habit, that in the course of completing some beautiful piece of lace or embroidery, that looked as if wrought by fairy fingers, she had at the same time committed whole pages of her favourite authors to memory, and would therefore not only relate to us the substance of her reading, but even recite long passages of poetry or prose by the hour together, in her soft agreeable voice, and with most admirable elocution. Her needlework was truly artistic; much of it would have been worthy to find a place in a museum. Her tapestry-work was as if painted, and an artist friend of ours once said of her groups and landscapes, that whilst the paintings done by some young ladies of his acquaintance looked as if worked in cross-stitch, Fräulein Fanny’s needlework was so fine that it might have been painted! “Look at that grey horse,” he went on, pointing to a little group, “so delicately is it shaded, that Wouwerman might have acknowledged it as the product of his brush!”