The prevailing note was that of vividness.

What the writer had felt, what she had imagined, what she had desired, was all set out, frequently in but few words, with such crystal clearness, such incisive point, that it came home to the reader's thought as a flash of sudden light might come home to his eye.

In a pre-eminent degree Stella possessed the gift of expression.

Even her most abstruse self-communings and speculations were portrayed so sharply that their meaning could not possibly be mistaken.
This it was that gave the book much of its value.

Her thoughts were not vague, she could define them in her own consciousness, and, what is more rare, on paper.
So much for the form of the journal, its matter is not so easy to describe.