pailfuls might be poured into it, I am dejected and uneasy when I see no results from my daily existence, but I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.’ * *
‘I think I am less happy, in many respects, than you
but particularly in this. You can speak freely to me
of all your circumstances and feelings, can you not?
It is not possible for me to be so profoundly frank with
any earthly friend. Thus my heart has no proper
home; it only can prefer some of its visiting-places to
others; and with deep regret I realize that I have, at
length, entered on the concentrating stage of life. It
was not time. I had been too sadly cramped. I had
not learned enough, and must always remain imperfect.
Enough! I am glad I have been able to say so
much.’
‘I have read nothing, — to signify, — except Goethe’s
“Campagne in Frankreich.” Have you looked through
it, and do you remember his intercourse with the
Wertherian Plessing? That tale pained me exceedingly,
We cry, “help, help,” and there is no help — in man
at least. How often I have thought, if I could see
Goethe, and tell him my state of mind, he would
support and guide me! He would be able to understand;
he would show me how to rule circumstances, instead
of being ruled by them; and, above all, he would not
have been so sure that all would be for the best, without
our making an effort to act out the oracles; he
would have wished to see me what Nature intended.
But his conduct to Plessing and Ohlenschlager shows
that to him, also, an appeal would have been vain.’
