My flower had blown — to live the life of dumb love-
liness, to look as it did then, fresh as the dew of the
morning — and afterwards waning in its beauty to
grow dimmer and more earthly, till a new and
different compression should shrink those long
pointed leaves, and bid them hang brown and
withered from the cup which was iheir cradle and
their grave.'

On this passage Lady Granville's comment is :
■ Sad human flower, like her (iwn beautiful
amaryllis — in her early glory and her present blight !
Yet a divine Hand may still force her back to what
God alone can re-open for her. She has but m
stretch forth hers and grasp it.'

On November 27 we have the following text :
'e ought to give the more earnest heed to tho



i8j HARRIET, COUNTESS GRANVILLE

things which we have heard, lest at any time we
should let them slip/ from Heb. iL i, and Lady
Granville comments : * This verse of yesterday's
afternoon service gives me the sanction I like best
to find for my daily gleanings.'

Lady Granville was evidently very much en-
grossed at this time with Dewey's Essays, which
we have before seen that she was reading aloud to
Lady Carlisle. She writes on November 28 :

•What Dewey says of Channing's preaching
confirms to me what prevents so many of the most
eloquent and clever men making the impression
they ought upon their hearers, ** He never seemed
so much to enforce truth as to utter it," and how
was this exemplified in the most sublime of
examples ! My fancy paints to me a picture . ..
