I fear, nevertheless, that some of my friends may feel their delicacy wounded by the praise which I could not always withhold. They must forgive me for my love's sake!
I have lived in your country and your homes with no ordinary affection;—your homes received me there in no ordinary manner. If the heaped-up measure sometimes ran over, it was less my fault than—yours. Ah! The deeds of selfishness and of hatred ring every day in our ears with the names of those who practise them. Let us preserve then other names to be conveyed round the world on the wings of spring and love, that like a heavenly seed they may take root in the earth, and cause all the best feelings of the soul to blossom. The heart sometimes is ready to doubt of goodness and its power on earth,—it must see before it can believe. I would hereby aid it in this respect. I have spoken of you.[1]
The best, the most beautiful, in your hearts and in your homes has, after all, not been revealed. I know that within the human heart and home, as in the old temple of the older covenant, there is a holy of holies upon whose golden ark the countenances of the cherubim may alone gaze and read the tables of the covenant.
I have followed my own convictions in that which I have censured or criticised in your country and your people. That which I myself have seen, heard, experienced, felt,
- ↑ In the English and American editions the initials of the names are merely given, where the names belong to private individuals. I have however considered this veiling of my friends to be superfluous in the Swedish, where in any case their names merely sound as a remote echo.
