going down those stairs." If the spirit of this old servant was materialised at the moment of passing, the materialising took the form at any rate of faithful service and of consideration for others. Florence's sympathy with those in distress is shown in the letter of condolence which she wrote to Miss Clarke upon the death of M. Fauriel:-- EMBLEY, _July_ 1844. I cannot help writing one word, my dear Miss Clarke, after having just received your note, though I know I cannot say anything which can be of any comfort. For there are few sorrows I do believe like your sorrow, and few people so necessary to another's happiness of every instant, as he was to yours.... How sorry I am, dear Miss Clarke, that you will not think of coming to us here. Oh, do not say that you "will not cloud young people's spirits." Do you think young people are so afraid of sorrow, or that if they have lively spirits, which I often doubt, they think these are worth anything, except in so far as they can be put at the service of sorrow, not to relieve it, which I believe can very seldom be done, but to sympathise with it? I am sure this is the only thing worth living for, and I do so believe that every tear one sheds waters some good thing into life.... Dear Miss Clarke, I wish we had you here, or at least could see you and pour out something of what our hearts are full of. That clever man of Thebes, one Cadmus, need never have existed, for any good that that cold pen and ink of his ever did, in the way of expressing oneself. The iron pen seems to make the words iron, but words are what always takes the dust off the butterfly's wings.... What nights we have had this last month, though when one thinks that there are hundreds and thousands of people suffering in the same way, and when one sees in every cottage some trouble which defies sympathy--and there is all the world putting on its shoes and stockings every morning all the same--and the wandering earth going its inexorable tread-mill through those cold-hearted stars in the eternal silence, as if nothing were the matter;--death seems less dreary than life at that rate. But I did not mean to say that, for who would know the peace of night, if it were not for the troubles of the day, "the welcome, the thrice-prayed-for, the most fair, the best beloved night," when one feels, what at other times one only repeats to oneself, that the coffin of every hope is the cradle of a good experience, and that nobody suffers in vain. It is odd what want of faith one has for one's friends. _We_ know what soft lots we would have made for them if we could; and that we should believe ourselves so infinitely more good-natured than God, that we cannot trust their lots with Him!