dy
intellectual growth had brought his powers to manhood, so far
as the ideal can do it, I wished this being might be launched
into the world of realities, his heart glowing with the
ardor of an immortal toward perfection, his eyes searching
everywhere to behold it; I wished he might collect into one
burning point those withering, palsying convictions, which, in
the ordinary routine of things, so gradually pervade the
soul; that he might suffer, in brief space, agonies of
disappointment commensurate with his unpreparedness
and confidence. And I thought, thus thrown back on the
representing pictorial resources I supposed him originally
to possess, with such material, and the need he must feel
of using it, such a man would suddenly dilate into a form
of Pride, Power, and Glory,--a centre, round which asking,
aimless hearts might rally,--a man fitted to act as
interpreter to the one tale of many-languaged eyes!

'What words are these! Perhaps you will feel as if I sought
but for the longest and strongest. Yet to my ear they do but
faintly describe the imagined powers of such a being.'

Margaret's home at this time was in the mansion-house formerly
belonging to Judge Dana,--a large, old-fashioned building, since taken
down, standing about a quarter of a mile from the Cambridge Colleges,
on the main road to Boston. The house stood back from the road, on
rising ground, which overlooked an extensive landscape. It was always
a pleasure to Margaret to look at the outlines of the distant hills
beyond the river, and to have before her this extent of horizon and
sky. In the last year of her residence in Cambridge, her father moved
to the old Brattle place,--a still more ancient edifice, with large,
old-fashioned garden, and stately rows of Linden trees. Here Margaret
enjoyed the garden walks, which took the place of the extensive view.

During these five years her life was not diversified by events,
but was marked by an inward history. Study, conversation, society,
friendship, and reflection on the aim and law of life, made up her
biography. Accordingly, these topics will constitute the substance
of this chapter, though sometimes, in order to give completeness to
a subject, we may anticipate a little, and insert passages from the
letters and journals of her Groton life.

[Footnote A: I had once before seen Margaret, when we were both
children about