PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE’S NOTE-BOOKS.

XII.

March, 1845.—­Nature sometimes displays a little tenderness for our vanity, but is never careful for our pride.  She is willing that we should look foolish in the eyes of others, but keeps our little nonsensicalnesses from ourselves.

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Perhaps there are higher intelligences that look upon all the manifestations of the human mind—­metaphysics, ethics, histories, politics, poems, stories, etc., etc.—­with the same interest that we look upon flowers, or any other humble production of nature,—­finding a beauty and fitness even in the poorest of them, which we cannot see in the best.

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A child or a young girl so sweet and beautiful, that God made new flowers on purpose for her.

May 4.—­On the river-side, by the Promontory of Columbines.  The river here makes a bend, nearly at a right angle.  On the opposite side, a high bank descends precipitately to the water; a few apple-trees are scattered along the declivity.  A small cottage, with a barn, peeps over the top of the bank; and at its foot, with their roots in the water, is a picturesque clump of several maple-trees, their trunks all in a cluster, and their tops forming a united mass of new fast-budding foliage.  At the foot of this clump of trees lies a boat, half in the water, half drawn up on the bank.  A tract of flags and water-weeds extends along the base of the bank, outside of which, at a late period, will grow the flat, broad leaves of the yellow water-lily, and the pond-lily.  A southwestern breeze is ruffling the river, and drives the little wavelets in the same direction as the current.  Most of the course of the river in this vicinity is through marshy and meadowy ground, as yet scarcely redeemed from the spring-time overflow, and which at all seasons is plashy and unfit for walking.  At my feet the water overbrims the shore, and kisses the new green grass, which sprouts even beneath it.

The Promontory of Columbines rises rugged and rocky from amidst surrounding lowlands, (in a field next to that where the monument is erected, near the Old Manse,) and it forms the forth-putting angle at the bend of the river.  In earlier spring the river embraces it all round, and converts it into an island.  Rocks, with flakes of dry moss covering them, peep out everywhere; and abundant columbines grow in the interstices of these rocks, and wherever else the soil is scanty and difficult enough to suit their fancy,—­avoiding the smoother and better sites, which they might just as well have chosen, close at hand.  They are earlier on this spot than anywhere else, and are therefore doubly valuable, though not nearly so large, nor of so rich a scarlet and gold, as some that we shall gather from the eastern slope of a hill, two or three