that girt her Tuscan home. She had, indeed, the wings of the bird; surely she had the voice; and truly may I add, she had the fond brooding breast.
This was the beautiful Pagan side of her, that found full space and scope in Italy, that second and greater Greece, and which sought expression in two especially of the poems in this collection—"The Invitation," and "Wild Flowers." But whilst she was conspicuously endowed with those light-seeking gifts and qualities which Christianity, and Protestant Christianity more especially, has shown itself rather too eager to put under a bushel, hers no less, and in a no less striking degree, were those virtues that do good by stealth, and which Christianity has so justly exalted; the gifts and fruits of the Spirit, as opposed to the Pagan gifts and fruits of the flesh,—love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, and faith. Thus, while she had in no degree rejected the precious inheritance bequeathed to us by sub-Olympian times, but gave witness in a thousand ways that great Pan is not dead, she was pre-eminently the child, too, of the Christian era, and was thus, in very truth, the heir of all the ages. For she was a Christian in every sense of the word; by her adherence to its creed, though always, be it understood, in its most catholic and comprehensive form, but still more by her steady and cheerful exercise of the virtues it especially inculcates. Inexhaustible patience and resignation to her own sufferings, inexhaustible sympathy and help for the afflictions of others, boundless toleration
