tial privileges I had invested you with. On the contrary, I only wonder that we should ever, after such gage given and received, (not by a look or tone, but by letter,) hold any frank communication. Preparations are good in life, prologues ruinous. I felt this even before I sent my note, but could not persuade myself to consign an impulse so embodied, to oblivion, from any consideration of expediency.’ * *
‘May 4th, 1830.— * * I have greatly wished to see
among us such a person of genius as the nineteenth
century can afford —i. e., one who has tasted in the
morning of existence the extremes of good and ill,
both imaginative and real. I had imagined a person
endowed by nature with that acute sense of Beauty,
(i. e., Harmony or Truth,) and that vast capacity
of desire, which give soul to love and ambition. I
had wished this person might grow up to manhood
alone (but not alone in crowds); I would have placed
him in a situation so retired, so obscure, that he
would quietly, but without bitter sense of isolation,
stand apart from all surrounding him. I would have
had him go on steadily, feeding his mind with
congenial love, hopefully confident that if he only
nourished his existence into perfect life, Fate would, at
fitting season, furnish an atmosphere and orbit meet for
his breathing and exercise. I wished he might adore,
not fever for, the bright phantoms of his mind’s
creation, and believe them but the shadows of external
things to be met with hereafter. After this steady
intellectual growth had brought his powers to manhood,
so far as the ideal can do it, I wished this being might
be launched into the world of realities, his heart glowing
with the ardor of an immortal toward perfection,
