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 grapple you indeed oftener than you dare to speak of. Here you dream first of that very sweet, but very shadowy success called Reputation. You think of the delight and astonishment it would give your mother and father, and most of all little Nelly, if you were winning such honors as now escape you. You measure your capacities by those about you, and watch their habit of study; you gaze for a half-hour together upon some successful man who has won his prizes, and wonder by what secret action he has done it. And when in time you come to be a competitor yourself, your anxiety is immense.