disagreeable conviction confirmed. Perhaps it
is just as well, however; for the sort of feverish impatience I have
very often while writing, because of the insufficiency of the process to
express, as rapidly and distinctly as I wish, my thoughts, is so
excessive, as to be childish. I am content, henceforth, to answer you to
the best of my _circumstances_ (for it is not to the best of my ability,
really) on any subject you please. It is enough that my words are of use
to you, and God knows it signifies nothing at all that I cannot conceive
how they should be so. You have misunderstood me, or I misexpressed
myself, with regard to the ground of my objecting to write upon the
subjects we have lately discussed in our letters. I do not think it
irreverent to advert to the highest subjects at any time. That which is
most profoundly serious to me, is always very near my thoughts--so much
so that it mingles constantly with them and my words in a manner rather
startling and shocking, I think, to people whose minds are parcelled out
into distinct and detached divisions--pigeon-holes, as it were--for the
sacred and profane, and whose seriousness never comes near their mirth.
This is not at all the case with me, with whom they are apt to run into
each other very frequently; seriousness is perhaps more habitual to my
mind than folly, but my laughter and jests are not very remotely allied
to my deepest convictions.

My instincts of vital truth being a very essential part of me, _must_
go with me to the playhouse, rehearsals, and performances, and all the
intermediate time of various occupations, so that it is not my
"veneration" which is shocked at the superficial mode in which I have
handled these themes, while writing of them to you, but my
"conscientiousness," which suggests the whole time that such matters
should not be spoken of without sufficient previous process of
reflection, and that it is behaving irreverently to _anything_ that
requires consideration to talk of it crudely without any. If the
sincerest and most strenuous mental application can hardly enable us to
arrive at glimpses of the truth upon those subjects, there is an
impertinent levity in uttering mere _notions_ about them which have been
submitted to no such test. You do _think_, and though you come to no
conclusions, are perfectly entitled to utter your _non_-conclusiveness;
but I have a cowardly dread of the labor of thinking steadily and
consecutively upon thes