“I love him so well, I will try to teach him moderation. If I can help it, he shall not feed on bitter ashes, nor try these paths of avarice and ambition.” It made me feel very strangely to hear him talk so to my old self. What a guif between! There is scarce a fibre left of the haughty, passionate, ambitious child he remembered and loved. I felt affection for him still; for his character was formed then, and had not altered, except by ripening and expanding! But thus, in other worlds, we shall remember our present selves.’
Margaret’s constancy to any genuine relation, once
established, was surprising. If her friends’ aim changed,
so as to take them out of her sphere, she was saddened
by it, and did not let them go without a struggle. But
wherever they continued “true to the original standard,”
(as she loved to phrase it) her affectionate interest would
follow them unimpaired through all the changes of life.
The principle of this constancy she thus expresses in a
letter to one of her brothers: —
‘Great and even fatal errors (so far as this life is
concerned) could not destroy my friendship for one in
whom I am sure of the kernel of nobleness.’
She never formed a friendship until she had seen and
known this germ of good; and afterwards judged
conduct by this. To this germ of good, to this highest law
of each individual, she held them true. But never did
she act like those who so often judge of their friend from
some report of his conduct, as if they had never known
him, and allow the inference from a single act to alter
the opinion formed by an induction from years of inter-
