She might have found recreation and stimulus in the music of Germany, but her chief limitation was on the side of Art. Music did not appeal to her, and, although one of her greatest gifts was the possession of a beautiful speaking voice, with a perfect natural production, she could not sing and had no ear for music at all. She argues with herself on the subject,—“Surely singing, for instance, is a wholesome and good amusement. Surely it is right that some should contribute it for others? Yet, perhaps, mere amusement, even for others, is not a life-work for anyone? At least unless _as a duty_. So few sing, as Fra Bartolomeo painted, ‘on their knees’.” This is estimable enough so far as it goes, but artistic perception is wanting, and throughout life she never got much farther in this direction, though she always loved to hear a simple congenial song sung by one she loved. “Do you care for the ‘unlearned praise’?” she used to say. When she quoted, as she sometimes did, “’Tis we musicians who know,”—it was not of music she was thinking. All through this period her main preoccupation was with religion. She was reading, among other things, the _In Memoriam_ and Robertson’s Sermons, and she continued to read them till the end of her life. Her volumes of Robertson are falling to pieces with sheer honest careful lifelong use, and many of the sermons are marked with a date and with initials to remind her of the times when she shared her treasure with some special friend. Assuredly, in the words of her loved quotation, Robertson “found her.” Living, as she was at this time however, mainly among Roman Catholics, she felt—as so many have felt—a real desire to share their communion. “I mean to study Romanism as thoroughly as I can,” she says. “Hitherto I have not by any means found, as C. Brontë, my repugnance to Roman Catholicism increased by close view.” She was anxious to get a proper breviary or missal, and apparently finding this difficult in Mannheim, she wrote to her Mother to send her one. That wonderful old lady! She can’t have enjoyed the commission, but she set about the fulfilment of it most loyally. And, oddly enough, she too met with many difficulties. She declined to be put off with _The Garden of the Soul_, and finally she writes: “I despair of getting a satisfactory breviary, unless you can send me definite orders for Treacher to procure one. Marvellous rubbish at the _only_ R.C. shop. They were _very_ anxious to fetch the R.C. priest!— to help me,—‘were sure he was within.’ Fancy if Daddy had come by, with the carriage at the door and I inside in deep conversation with said Priest!...”