think only of preparing himself for Harvard University, and when there of preparing himself for the profession of Law.  As a Lawyer, again, the ends constantly presented were to work for distinction in the community, and for the means of supporting a family.  To be an honored citizen, and to have a home on earth, were made the great aims of existence.  To open the deeper fountains of the soul, to regard life here as the prophetic entrance to immortality, to develop his spirit to perfection,—­motives like these had never been suggested to him, either by fellow-beings or by outward circumstances.  The result was a character, in its social aspect, of quite the common sort.  A good son and brother, a kind neighbor, an active man of business—­in all these outward relations he was but one of a class, which surrounding conditions have made the majority among us.  In the more delicate and individual relations, he never approached but two mortals, my mother and myself.

’His love for my mother was the green spot on which he stood apart from the common-places of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence.  She was one of those fair and flower-like natures, which sometimes spring up even beside the most dusty highways of life—­a creature not to be shaped into a merely useful instrument, but bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic birds.  Of all persons whom I have known, she had in her most of the angelic,—­of that spontaneous love for every living thing, for man, and beast, and tree, which restores the golden age.’

DEATH IN THE HOUSE.

’My earliest recollection is of a death,—­the death of a sister, two years younger than myself.  Probably there is a sense of childish endearments, such as belong to this tie, mingled with that of loss, of wonder, and mystery; but these last are prominent in memory.  I remember coming home and meeting our nursery-maid, her face streaming with tears.  That strange sight of tears made an indelible impression.  I realize how little I was of stature, in that I looked up to this weeping face;—­and it has often seemed since, that—­full-grown for the life of this earth, I have looked up just so, at times of threatening, of doubt, and distress, and that just so has some being of the next higher order of existences looked down, aware of a law unknown to me, and tenderly commiserating the pain I muse endure in emerging from my ignorance.

’She took me by the hand and led me into a still and dark chamber,—­then drew aside the curtain and showed me my sister.  I see yet that beauty of death!  The highest achievements of sculpture are only the reminder of its severe sweetness.  Then I remember the house all still and dark,—­the people in their black clothes and dreary faces,—­the scent of the newly-made coffin,—­my being set up in a chair and detained by a gentle hand to hear the clergyman,—­the carriages slowly going, the procession slowly doling out their