esence, to
make far more difference between one person and another than any
contrast of circumstances can do. The possessor does not have it for
nothing. It isolates, particularly in childhood; it takes away some
common blessings, but then it consoles for them all."

With this poetic temperament, that saw beauty in flower, and sky, and
bird, that felt keenly all the sorrow and all the happiness of the
world about her, that wrote of life rather than art, because to live
rightly was the whole problem of human existence, with this poetic
temperament, the girl grew to womanhood in the city bordering on the
sea.

Boston, at the mouth of the Witham, was once a famous seaport, the
rival of London in commercial prosperity, in the thirteenth century.
It was the site of the famous monastery of St. Botolph, built by
a pious monk in 657. The town which grew up around it was called
Botolph's town, contracted finally to Boston. From this town Reverend
John Cotton came to America, and gave the name to the capital of
Massachusetts, in which he settled. The present famous old church of
St. Botolph was founded in 1309, having a bell-tower three hundred
feet high, which supports a lantern visible at sea for forty miles.

The surrounding country is made up largely of marshes reclaimed from
the sea, which are called fens, and slightly elevated tracts of land
called moors. Here Jean Ingelow studied the green meadows and the
ever-changing ocean.

Her first book, _A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings_, was
published in 1850, when she was twenty, and a novel, _Allerton and
Dreux_, in 1851; nine years later her _Tales of Orris_. But her
fame came at thirty-three, when her first full book of _Poems_ was
published in 1863. This was dedicated to a much loved brother, George
K. Ingelow:--

"YOUR LOVING SISTER
OFFERS YOU THESE POEMS, PARTLY AS
AN EXPRESSION OF HER AFFECTION, PARTLY FOR THE
PLEASURE OF CONNECTING HER EFFORT
WITH YOUR NAME."

The press everywhere gave flattering notices. A new singer had come;
not one whose life had been spent in the study of Greek roots, simply,
but one who had studied nature and humanity. She had a message to give
the world, and she gave it well. It was a message of good cheer, of
earnest purpose, of contentment and hope.

"What though unmarked the happy workman toil,
And break unthanked of man the stubborn clod?
It is enough, for sacre