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228 ornament to be worn in a ball-room, and before she had found out its full value, it had apparently ceased to charm. To her active and unwearied mind, the contest for the prize was better than the possession of it. Quick and vivid sensation was a necessity in her nature; visions, rhapsodies, reveries, were the natural offspring of her excitable and imaginative temperament; these would make themselves heard, taking the expression of the moment, and she "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came;" she wrote on, because she could not help it.

But to what end? Was she to go on writing Troubadours and Golden Violets all her days—apostrophizing loves, memories, hopes, and fears, for ever, in scattered songs and uncompleted stanzas, and running the chance of weakening the effect of her past music by the monotony of the note? That she was in danger of doing this was indicated by the tide of criticism that set in against her. It stimulated her to a gradual change of the poetic note that had acquired for her more popularity that she could permanently retain. Her thoughts found a deeper channel, and flowed still more freely; her observation took a wider range, and scanned the features of life as they presented themselves to her earnest gaze—not as she had imaged them in the pages of chivalry and romance, or shaped them for herself amidst the grotesque fancies of a dream. She discovered that her powers acquired elasticity, as the subjects on which they were exercised became more various; and that the world widened as she went on. Reality, in short, grew as familiar to her as Romance. She led Prose captive, as she had led Poetry. She became the author of "Francesca Carrara," and of "Ethel Churchill." Compare these works (the latest of