,---
like rainbows that the sun drinks with his beams.

The affection for a mother, whose kindness you recall with a suffused
eye, is not gone, or blighted; but it is woven up, as only a single
adorning tissue, into the growing pride of youth: it is cherished in the
proud soul rather as a redeeming weakness than as a vital energy.

And the love for Nelly, though it bates no jot of fervor, is woven into
the scale of growing purposes rather as a color to adorn than as a
strand to strengthen.

As for your other loves, those romantic ones which were kindled by
bright eyes, and the stolen reading of Miss Porter's novels, they linger
on your mind like perfumes; and they float down your memory--with the
figure, the step, the last words of those young girls who raised
them--like the types of some dimly shadowed but deeper passion, which is
some time to spur your maturer purposes and to quicken your manly
resolves.

It would be hard to tell, for you do not as yet know, but that Madge
herself--hoidenish, blue-eyed Madge--is to be the very one who will gain
such hold upon your riper affections as she has held already over your
boyish caprice. It is a part of the pride--I may say rather an evidence
of the pride--which youth feels in leaving boyhood behind him, to talk
laughingly and carelessly of those attachments which made his young
years so balmy with dreams.

II.

_First Ambition._

I believe that sooner or later there come to every man dreams of
ambition. They may be covered with the sloth of habit, or with the
pretence of humility; they may come only in dim, shadowy visions, that
feed the eye like the glories of an ocean sunrise; but you may be sure
that they will come: even before one is aware, the bold, adventurous
goddess, whose name is Ambition, and whose dower is Fame, will be toying
with the feeble heart. And she pushes her ventures with a bold hand; she
makes timidity strong, and weakness valiant.

The way of a man's heart will be foreshadowed by what goodness lies in
him,--coming from above, and from around;--but a way foreshadowed is not
a way made. And the making of a man's way comes only from that
quickening of resolve which we call Ambition. It is the spur that makes
man struggle with Destiny: it is Heaven's own incentive, to make Purpose
great, and Achievement greater.

It would be strange if you, in that cloister life of a college, did not
sometimes feel a dawning of new resolves. They grappl