and legends came recommended to her by this
symbolism. Her dreams, of course, partook of this symmetry. The same
dream returns to her periodically, annually, and punctual to its
night. One dream she marks in her journal as repeated for the fourth
time:--

'In C., I at last distinctly recognized the figure of the
early vision, whom I found after I had left A., who led me,
on the bridge, towards the city, glittering in sunset, but,
midway, the bridge went under water. I have often seen in her
face that it was she, but refused to believe it.'

She valued, of course, the significance of flowers, and chose emblems
for her friends from her garden.

'TO ----, WITH HEARTSEASE.

'Content, in purple lustre clad,
Kingly serene, and golden glad,
No demi-hues of sad contrition,
No pallors of enforced submission;--
Give me such content as this,
And keep awhile the rosy bliss.'

DAEMONOLOGY.

This catching at straws of coincidence, where all is geometrical,
seems the necessity of certain natures. It, is true, that, in every
good work, the particulars are right, and, that every spot of light on
the ground, under the trees, is a perfect image of the sun. Yet, for
astronomical purposes, an observatory is better than an orchard; and
in a universe which is nothing but generations, or an unbroken suite
of cause and effect, to infer Providence, because a man happens to
find a shilling on the pavement just when he wants one to spend, is
puerile, and much as if each of us should date his letters and notes
of hand from his own birthday, instead of from Christ's or the king's
reign, or the current Congress. These, to be sure, are also, at first,
petty and private beginnings, but, by the world of men, clothed with a
social and cosmical character.

It will be seen, however, that this propensity Margaret held with
certain tenets of fate, which always swayed her, and which Goethe,
who had found room and fine names for all this in his system, had
encouraged; and, I may add, which her own experiences, early and late,
seemed strangely to justify.

Some extracts, from her letters to different persons, will show how
this matter lay in her mind.

'_December 17, 1829_.--The following instance of beautiful
credulity, in Rousseau, has taken my mind greatly. This remote
seeking for the decrees of fate, this feeling of a destiny,
casting its shadows from the very morning of thought, is t