of such a person, after an existence and relations very foreign to
the world in which it lives; and equally far from, and hostile to
that condition in which it thrives. The vague discontent of such
a mind is one of the causes of its activity; and how far it may be
stimulated into diseased intensity by injudicious treatment, is a
question of large importance for the consideration of philosophers.
The imaginative nature is one singularly sensitive in its conditions;
quick, jealous, watchful, earnest, stirring, and perpetually
breaking down the ordinary barriers of the actual, in its struggles
to ascertain the extent of the possible. The tyranny which drives
it from the ordinary resources and enjoyments of the young,
by throwing it more completely on its own, impels into desperate
activity that daring of the imaginative mood, which, at no time,
is wanting in courage and audacity. My mind was one singularly
imaginative in its structure; and my ardent temperament contributed
largely to its activity. Solitude, into which I was forced by the
repulsive and unkind treatment of my relatives, was also favorable
to the exercise of this influence; and my heart may be said to have
taken, in turn, every color and aspect which informed my eyes. It
was a blind heart for this very reason, in respect to all those
things for which it should have had a color of its own. Books and
the woods--the voice of waters and of song--the dim mysteries of
poetry, and the whispers of lonely forest-walks, which beguiled me
into myself, and more remotely from my fellows, were all, so far
as my social relations were concerned, evil influences! Influences
which were only in part overcome by the communion of such gentle
beings as William Edgerton and Julia Clifford.

With these friends, and these only, I grew up. As my years advanced,
my intimacy with the former increased, and with the latter diminished.