_The Flower and the Pearl._---- has written wonders about the mystery of personality. Why do we love it? In the first place, each wishes to embrace a whole, and this seems the readiest way. The intellect soars, the heart clasps; from putting "a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," thou wouldst return to thy own little green isle of emotion, and be the loving and playful fay, rather than the delicate Ariel. Then most persons are plants, organic. We can predict their growth according to their own law. From the young girl we can predict the lustre, the fragrance of the future flower. It waves gracefully to the breeze, the dew rests upon its petals, the bee busies himself in them, and flies away after a brief rapture, richly laden. When it fades, its leaves fall softly on the bosom of Mother Earth, to all whose feelings it has so closely conformed. It has lived as a part of nature; its life was music, and we open our hearts to the melody. But characters like thine and mine are mineral. We are the bone and sinew, these the smiles and glances, of earth. We lie nearer the mighty heart, and boast an existence more enduring than they. The sod lies heavy on us, or, if we show ourselves, the melancholy moss clings to us. If we are to be made into palaces and temples, we must be hewn and chiselled by instruments of unsparing sharpness. The process is mechanical and unpleasing; the noises which accompany it, discordant and obtrusive; the artist is surrounded with rubbish. Yet we may be polished to marble smoothness. In our veins may lie the diamond, the ruby, perhaps the emblematic carbuncle. The flower is pressed to the bosom with intense emotion, but in the home of love it withers and is cast away. The gem is worn with less love, but with more pride; if we enjoy its sparkle, the joy is partly from calculation of its value; but if it be lost, we regret it long. For myself, my name is Pearl.[42] That lies at the beginning, amid slime and foul prodigies from which only its unsightly shell protects. It is cradled and brought to its noblest state amid disease and decay. Only the experienced diver could have known that it was there, and brought it to the strand, where it is valued as pure, round, and, if less brilliant than the diamond, yet an ornament for a kingly head. Were it again immersed in the element where first it dwelt, now that it is stripped of the protecting shell, soon would it blacken into deformity. So what is noblest in my soul has sprung from disease, present defeat, disappointment, and untoward outward circumstance.