’I look not fairly to myself, at the present moment.  If noble growths are always slow, others may ripen far worthier fruit than is permitted to my tropical heats and tornadoes.  Let me clasp the cross on my breast, as I have done a thousand times before.’

      ’Let me but gather from the earth one full-grown fragrant flower;
      Within my bosom let it bloom through, its one blooming hour;
      Within my bosom let it die, and to its latest breath
      My own shall answer, “Having lived, I shrink not now from death.” 
      It is this niggard halfness that turns my heart to stone;
      ’T is the cup seen, not tasted, that makes the infant moan. 
      For once let me press firm my lips upon the moment’s brow,
      For once let me distinctly feel I am all happy now,
      And bliss shall seal a blessing upon that moment’s brow.’

’I was in a state of celestial happiness, which lasted a great while.  For months I was all radiant with faith, and love, and life.  I began to be myself.  Night and day were equally beautiful, and the lowest and highest equally holy.  Before, it had seemed as if the Divine only gleamed upon me; but then it poured into and through me a tide of light.  I have passed down from the rosy mountain, now; but I do not forget its pure air, nor how the storms looked as they rolled beneath my feet.  I have received my assurance, and if the shadows should lie upon me for a century, they could never make me forgetful of the true hour.  Patiently I bide my time.’

The last passage describes a peculiar illumination, to which Margaret often referred as the period when her earthly being culminated, and when, in the noon-tide of loving enthusiasm, she felt wholly at one with God, with Man, and the Universe.  It was ever after, to her, an earnest that she was of the Elect.  In a letter to one of her confidential female friends, she thus fondly looks back to this experience on the mount of transfiguration:—­

’You know how, when the leadings of my life found their interpretation, I longed to share my joy with those I prized most; for I felt that if they could but understand the past we should meet entirely.  They received me, some more, some less, according to the degree of intimacy between our natures.  But now I have done with the past, and again move forward.  The path looks more difficult, but I am better able to bear its trials.  We shall have much communion, even if not in the deepest places.  I feel no need of isolation, but only of temperance in thought and speech, that the essence may not evaporate in words, but grow plenteous within.  The Life will give me to my own.  I am not yet so worthy to love as some others are, because my manifold nature is not yet harmonized enough to be faithful, and I begin, to see how much it was the want of a pure music in me that has made the good doubt me.  Yet have I been true to the best light I had, and