has known intimately distinguished Europeans who have regarded the United States as the Utopia of their dreams. In her girlhood she often made one in the charming circle which gathered at La Grange around "that hero of two worlds," Lafayette, a delightful atmosphere which developed, if not created, artists and political dreamers.

After Janet became a woman, she knew De Tocqueville, and, later, Ampère, and certainly can theorize about the American States as patriotically, poetically, and with as much enthusiasm as the best dreaming philosopher of them all.

Her early life was one of bitter sorrow. Wrong, injustice, disgrace, every biting drop that could be distilled in the alembic of grief, fell on her young heart. After she had passed her early womanhood, without ever thinking of love or its sweet comforts, this great joy of life came to her. Here, on this beautiful lake shore, while striving to eke out a slender income, educate her young sister and some orphan nieces, and nurse a dying, brokenhearted widowed sister, she met with Paul Dale, a prosperous, cultured Englishman. She has told me, by short bits from time to time, her story, for Janet is not one who talks much of that which touches her feelings most: but her short, rapid utterance is very touching, of —

"How strange it should have seemed, and yet it did not, for Paul and me to love each other. I had no faith in mortal man left, and he came to teach me, by his own truth and excellence, perfect faith."

Paul Dale must have been a man worthy of love. He gathered up the whole family and his Janet most tenderly to his heart; he took them to his beautiful English home; used his delightful wealth generously, made life pleasant to the dying widowed sister and her children;

soothed Janet, and when her heart ached with the sorrow caused by the deaths of the darlings for whom she had labored so courageously for years, he filled the goblet of life to overflowing with his own rich purple love, and pressed it tenderly to her lips. She dared not grieve, even when their only child, the boy for whose birth Paul had wished so earnestly, breathed one short breath and then died.

"O no," she has said to me, "I never uttered a murmur, for had I not Paul? And so long as death, which seemed then to be my only pursuing sorrow, did not touch him, I could not mourn."

At last, of her whole large family there were only two left, Janet and Venitia, the oldest and youngest! All had died just when prosperity came, and they could so well have enjoyed life together. Paul adopted Venitia, of whom he was very fond, and directed her education with as much care as taste. The girl early showed remarkable musical ability. To give her every advantage in her musical studies, he left England and resided in Germany for a while.

Then came death again; and this time it took Paul, and with it Janet's best part of life. She brought him here, and laid him down under the shadow of that old church spire, where their baby boy was sleeping his little slumber, and where she also hopes to lie some day, “ God willing," she says, with a soft submission most touching in one so self-sufficing and firm.

And now a few words about Venitia, then I must clasp my journal and go to bed, as it is past midnight. The beautiful girl has just been in to say good night and give me one of her caresses, which are so different from Janet's, though much more profuse. Janet's touch my

heart, Venitia's only my body; and yet we both love each other dearly. Let me describe her as she looked, standing by my window a few moments since, gazing out on the night and the lake, and talking of Italy and our journey with all the keen fresh taste for novelty which youth gives.

Venitia, whose rather fanciful name was given her from her birthplace, Venice, is really a beautiful woman. Her figure has the majesty of an empress and the grace of a nymph, which give her that double charm of infantile innocence and womanly reserve. Her height is full, her development fine; large, well-formed limbs, statuelike in their mould. She has a well-shaped, well-poised head, with a great wealth of waving hair, a rich brown in its hue. Her fine brow expresses capability of thought as her eyes do of feeling, and these eyes are the glory of her face.

The arch of the brow is a little prominent, and gives her a stern expression; the setting and shape of the eye and whole facial outline is Greek; but the full face, owing to the firm brow, is not so flat as the Greek form, and therefore not so insipid. Her eyes are large, their expression, and that of the mouth, as imperious as those of a Juno. Indeed, she has often been likened to the Juno in the Villa Ludovisi at Rome, a profile engraving of which I have had framed, and christened it playfully "Venitia." There is the same mouth line, the same liquid reflective eyeball and resolute curve of the brow and lip, the firm, high-arched lines, indicative of strong will, contending with the soft flowing ones of loveliness.

The color of the eyes is a tender poetic gray, which deepens to an intense black in earnest moments from the enlarging of the pupil, and there is an expression in them

sometimes that amounts almost to inspiration; but the fire is too redundant, too intrepid, and at times there is a sombre mysterious look in them which tells of distant thunder and far-off lightning; they need toning down, with some great emotion that shall shake her being to its very centre.

Her mouth, that feature which tells so much of one's character and culture, is faultless. Some one has well said, that all the features of the human face are made for us but our mouths; these we make for ourselves. Venitia's is full of expression; the rich hued lips are as quivering and trembling as "shadowy water with a sweet south wind breathing over it"; and the curves are those soft, delicate ones, which only culture and the early discipline of refinement can give; but there is that same imperious line triumphant, which hardens her whole face, and which must be the one that makes the striking resemblance to the Juno; for I have seen a simple fragment of a female head on a mutilated gem pronounced to be that of the haughty queen of the gods, simply from this imperious mouth line.

A pallor which the Italians call morbidezza is the hue of her skin, golden and transparent in its high lights like ivory. Titian knew and felt to the very tingling point of his fingers the rich loveliness of such flesh.

Does this description sound exaggerated? To me it seems tame; for words can scarcely give the effect produced on me by such beauty as Venitia's. I lie on the lounge sometimes and watch her with half-closed eyes, as I would a picture or statue, her graceful motions, every attitude an unconscious pose of statue-like beauty, and think of luscious fruit, delightful sounds, warm coloring, and great sculptors' creations. Why, to paint Venitia, a

Raphael and Titian should unite; for she has the pure beauty of a Madonna, combined with the rich full size and attraction of a Magdalen.

She has all the organization of an artist, too,— quick perceptions, keen enjoyments, is sympathetic, and to a certain point creative; but, with all this beauty of mind and mould, there is a mysterious, veiled, inexplicable something about her, which keeps her from developing completely; she is by some enchantment locked up from herself and from others.

Venitia's life melody is not only yet unwritten, but even unprefigured; here is the fine human instrument with its rich assemblage of strings and keys; preluding chords, too, are heard full of promising beauty, but the life-theme is not hinted at. To some women this theme never comes; the whole human existence is but a gentle soft preluding; and others even have preludes full of complicated harmonies, sounding like intricate themes, but the life pieces end as mere voluntaries, nothing more, and so it may be with our Venitia.

We are very proud of her. She gives us no cause for uneasiness or discomfort. There is none of the restlessness and caprice about her which might be pardoned in one so gifted and charming. She is pure and sparkling, too, like a first-water diamond, yes, that is just it, — for she is almost as hard.