Selected letters of Mendelssohn/Letter 33
TO HIS NEPHEW, SEBASTIAN HENSEL.
Dear Sebastian,—I must wish you happiness for your birthday. It is the most solemn you have yet seen. To look back at this day last year is now a great sorrow for you, for then your mother stood by your side; but may the looking forward at your years to come give you strength and courage, for then also will your mother be with you in all your life and all your actions. May it all be good and worthy, and every step of yours be directed to the goal that she looks forward to for you, and to which her example and her spirit have accompanied you and ever will, so long as you are faithful to her. And, in other words, that means indeed all your life long. Whatever branch of life and knowledge and activity you devote yourself to, it is essential to will, not to wish for, mind, but to will, something useful and noble, and that is enough. Everywhere there is now a want, and ever will be a want, of good, stout-hearted workers. It is not true what people say about it being harder to accomplish anything now than it was formerly. On the contrary, it is and remains, in a sense, easy, or else it is impossible. All that is wanted is true inward courage, real love, real unconquerable will, and all these you should not want for, for you have the sweetest, loveliest pattern of them unchangeably before you. If you follow that, and accomplish it all, well; yet nothing can be attained without the accomplishment of that inward desire I have for you to-day. God be with you.
In this lies comfort and strength, and joy for the future is in it also. I often long to be able to pass these days with you and your Aunt Rebecca. We expect your father in ten or twelve days from now, but I wish you were coming with him, and then we could sketch from nature together. Lately I have "composed" several pictures—an old castle perched on a rock amid the forest with a perspective stretching away to the plain, then a terrace with an old linden tree and an image of the Virgin beneath it, and last, a solitary mountain lake, with high rocks all round it, and boats is the foreground. Wouldn't you like to try these subjects, and let us compare our skill? Do it, dear Sebastian, and show me when we meet again—very soon, I hope. And God be with you.—Always yours,
THE END.
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