unfavorable circumstances. She was born for the love and ornament of life. I can scarcely forbear weeping sometimes, when I look on her, and think what happiness and beauty she might have conferred. She is as yet all unconscious of herself, and she rather dreads being with me, because I make her too conscious. She was on the point, at ——, of telling me all she knew of herself; but I saw she dreaded, while she wished, that I should give a local habitation and a name to what lay undefined, floating before her, the phantom of her destiny; or rather lead her to give it, for she always approaches a tragical clearness when talking with me.’
‘—— has been to see us. But it serves not to know
such a person, who perpetually defaces the high by
such strange mingling with the low. It certainly is
not pleasant to hear of God and Miss Biddeford in a
breath. To me, this hasty attempt at skimming from
the deeps of theosophy is as unpleasant as the rude
vanity of reformers. Dear Beauty! where, where,
amid these morasses and pine barrens, shall we make
thee a temple? where find a Greek to guard it, — clear-eyed,
deep-thoughted, and delicate enough to appreciate
the relations and gradations which nature always
observes?’
An acute and illuminated woman, who, in this age
of indifferentism, holds on with both hands to the creed
of the Pilgrims, writes of Margaret, whom she saw but
once: — “She looked very sensible, but as if contending
with ill health and duties. She lay, all the day and
evening, on the sofa, and catechized me, who told my
literal traditions, like any old bobbin-woman.”
