I should have mentioned before, that a friend calling upon me the morning after my meeting with the baronne, saw the flower which she had placed in my hand standing in a glass of water on the table. An idea struck me: "Do you know any thing of the language of flowers?" I asked. "Something," was the reply. "What, then, is the meaning of this?" "SECRECY." DIFFICULTY. There is an aim which all Nature seeks; the flower that opens from the bud--the light that breaks the cloud into a thousand forms of beauty--is calmly striving to assume the perfect glory of its power; and the child, whose proud laugh heralds the mastery of a new lesson, unconsciously develops the same life-impulse seeking to prove the power it has felt its own. This is the real goal of life shining dimly from afar; for as our fullest power was never yet attained, it is a treasure which must be sought, its extent and distance being unknown. No man can tell what he can do, or suffer, until tried; his path of action broadens out before him; and, while a path appears, there is power to traverse it. It is like the fabled hill of Genius, that ever presented a loftier elevation above the one attained. It is like the glory of the stars, which shine by borrowed light, each seeming source of which is tributary to one more distant, until the view is lost to us; yet we only know there must be a life-giving centre, and, to the steady mind, though the goal of life be dim and distant, its light is fixed and certain, while all lesser aims are but reflections of this glory in myriad-descending shades, which must be passed, one by one, as the steps of the ladder on which he mounts to Heaven. Man has an unfortunate predilection to pervert whatever God throws in his way to aid him, and thus turn good to evil. The minor hopes which spur to action are mistaken for the final one; and we often look no higher than some mean wish, allowing that to rule us which should have been our servant. From this false view rises little exertion, for it is impossible for man to believe in something better and be content with worse. We all aim at self-control and independence while in the shadow of a power which controls us, whispering innerly, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther;" but how apt is self-indulgence to suit this limit to its own measure, and suffer veneration and doubt to overgrow and suppress the rising hope of independent thought. "I am not permitted to know this, or to do this," is the excuse of the weak and trivial; but the question should be, "_Can_ I know or do this?" for what is not permitted we can not do. We may not know the events of the future, or the period of a thought, or the Great First Cause, but we may hope to see and combine the atoms of things--pierce the realms of space--make the wilderness a garden--attain perfection of soul and body; and for this our end we may master all things needful.