t and
artist in tendency, if not yet fairly developed,--a woman, too;--and
genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem,
as you may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the stock which
cannot keep pace with its evolution.

I think now you know something of this young person. She wants nothing
but an atmosphere to expand in. Now and then one meets with a nature
for which our hard, practical New England life is obviously utterly
incompetent. It comes up, as a Southern seed, dropped by accident in one
of our gardens, finds itself trying to grow and blow into flower among
the homely roots and the hardy shrubs that surround it. There is no
question that certain persons who are born among us find themselves many
degrees too far north. Tropical by organization, they cannot fight for
life with our eastern and northwestern breezes without losing the
color and fragrance into which their lives would have blossomed in
the latitude of myrtles and oranges. Strange effects are produced by
suffering any living thing to be developed under conditions such as
Nature had not intended for it. A French physiologist confined some
tadpoles under water in the dark. Removed from the natural stimulus of
light, they did not develop legs and arms at the proper period of their
growth, and so become frogs; they swelled and spread into gigantic
tadpoles. I have seen a hundred colossal human tadpoles, overgrown
Zarvce or embryos; nay, I am afraid we Protestants should look on a
considerable proportion of the Holy Father's one hundred and thirty-nine
millions as spiritual larvae, sculling about in the dark by the aid
of their caudal extremities, instead of standing on their legs, and
breathing by gills, instead of taking the free air of heaven into the
lungs made to receive it. Of course we never try to keep young souls
in the tadpole state, for fear they should get a pair or two of legs
by-and-by and jump out of the pool where they have been bred and fed!
Never! Never. Never?

Now to go back to our plant. You may know, that, for the earlier stages
of development of almost any vegetable, you only want air, water, light,
and warmth. But by-and-by, if it is to have special complex principles
as a part of its organization, they must be supplied by the soil;--your
pears will crack, if the root of the tree gets no iron,--your
asparagus-bed wants salt as much as you do. Just at the period of
adolescence, the mind often suddenly b