Her thoughts of heaven were beautiful as angels, and quite as untangible; and her views of life were as unreal as the view of a landscape when it is shrouded in a silvery mist. But in her eyes every thing was beautiful, and pure, and full of love, just as she was herself. From the every day things of life she seemed to shrink, as from a copse of brambles; or, if she could not escape them, she would cover them with wreaths of artificial flowers. It was almost amusing to hear her, as she grew toward womanhood, expatiate on the perfect happiness of fervent and mutual affection, friendship, she named it thus, but the friend she had not found. I might have been the one, only I could not understand her spirit, she said, and of a truth I could not, and I much doubted whether she understood it herself. But I frequently assured her that she would go all her life mourning, for that the perfection she sought did not exist on earth. But it was really distressing to hear her talk of love; “the perfect adaptation, the blissful union of heart and soul, the blissful blending of the whole being, the pure, unselfish devotion; and, finally, the happiness, the certain, the enduring, the all-pervading happiness of mutual and successful love.” She could not see that her parents, though affectionate and devoted, were not always happy; she could not perceive that all the married people of her acquaintance had cause for dissatisfaction, and were more or less unhappy. Finally, the beautiful imagery of her pure and loving nature began to take form, and portray itself in song. She was a true poet, for she gave voice to the real feelings and convictions of her soul; she was a visionary poet, for all her feelings were of romance, all her convictions were fanciful and extravagant. But time would have made of these a real, as well as true poet, by chastening the romance, dispelling the visions of fancy, and sobering the young spirit with the lessons of experience and the teachings of reality. The seclusion in which she passed her life, while it shielded her purity from the heartless world’s contamination, afforded every facility for the fostering of her constitutional romance of feeling. Shut up within the little circle of her kindred and early friends, she knew nothing of the deceit, the fickleness and selfishness of the human race; and her opinions, formed from high colored novels, were all extravagant and unreal.