Page:Poems Blagden.djvu/17

 for their weaknesses and boundless forgiveness for their sins,—these were the credentials which proved her a disciple of the divine teaching of the Galilean Lake. Many, indeed, of her intimate friends sat apart, in the terse language of Mr Tennyson, "holding no form of creed, but contemplating all." But so large was her own interpretation of doctrines which easily lend themselves to narrow and exclusive views, that her belief seemed almost to comprehend their inability and refusal to accept it; and, of a certainty, it never caused the faintest shadow of alienation or division to intervene between herself and any human being. For, after all, practical benevolence was her Religion. She united with the sensuous love of sounds that are quite independent of man's condition and fortunes, of the song of birds, of the ripple of streams, of the tumbling of torrents, of the roll of the sullen thunder, the finest moral ear for "the still sad music of humanity." She was attuned to every possible note of wail, and answered it with quick-throbbing sympathy. No matter what might be at the moment her own occupations, her own plans, or the demands of her own interest, she quitted them on the instant at the invitation of helplessness. She was always under arms at the call of compassion. She worked hard, and lived, in great measure, by the exercise of her pen; but neither absorption in the task, nor what others would have deemed the absolute necessity of not being interrupted till it was completed, delayed her step for a second when it was summoned to the