As she had confided to her journal, the placid serenity of her life had become a sea of mad unrest.

An elevating serenity was, however, the leading expression of her features, and in that she presented the strongest contrast to her rival, whose beautiful face was ever swept by the emotion of the moment, and who gleamed one hour and shadowed over the next like a corn-field in the wind.

Here we have the simplest colouring and perfect sweetness, and such serenity of mastery as must be the despair of the copyists, who, however, never cease attempting it.

This unruffled serenity, this joyful acceptance of material existence and its pleasures are not in the Persian poet the result of the carelessness and shallowness of Horace, or the cold-blooded worldliness and sensuality of Martial.

Such must be his dread of the approaching trial, as will leave him little attention to the opinion of those whom he is leaving for ever; and the serenity that is not felt, it can be no virtue to feign.'

Health, placid serenity, and every domestic pleasure are the lot of my friend; while I, who once possessed the means of each, and the capacity of tasting them, have been tossed upon the waves of folly, till I am shipwrecked on the shoals of despair.