ous an edition, I pray
you to lend and send it to me by mail.

What atheism was to the minds of these two men amazes me. Lucretius
was an Epicurean in life, perhaps, as well as philosophy, but I want to
understand him better. I want to see whether he anywhere laments over
the desolation of his system. That a man of his power and genius should
have accepted it calmly and indifferently, is what I cannot understand.
As for Omar, he seems to turn it all into sport. "Don't think at all,"
is what he says; "drown all thought in wine." But he writes very
deftly, and I cannot but think that his resort is something like the
drunkard's,--to escape the great misery.

To Rev. Henry W Bellows, D.D.

ST. DAVID'S, Jan. 11, 1876.

. . . IT is n't everybody that can turn within, and ask such questions as
you do. But though I laughed at the exaggeration, I admire the tendency.
I suppose nobody ever did much, or advanced far, without more or less of
it. But your appreciation of others beats your depreciation of yourself.
For me, I am so poor in fact and in my own opinion, that,--what do you
suppose I am going to say?--that I utterly reject and cast away the kind
things you say of me? No, I don't; that is, I won't. I am determined to
make the most of them. For, to be serious, I have poured out my mind and
[334] heart into my preaching. I have written with tears in my eyes
and thrills through my frame, and why shall I say, it is nothing? Nay,
though I have never been famed as a preacher, I do believe that what I
have preached has told upon the hearts of my hearers as deeply, perhaps,
as what is commonly called eloquence. But when you speak of my work as
"put beyond cavil and beyond forgetfulness," I cover my face with my
hands, with confusion.

But enough of personalities, except to say that I think you exaggerate
and fear too much the trials that old age, if it come, will bring upon
you. Not to say that your temperament is more cheerful and hopeful than
mine, you are embosomed in interests and friendships that will cling
about you as long as you live. I am comparatively alone. . . .

But after all, the burden of old age lies not in such questions as
these. It is a solemn crisis in our being, of which I cannot write now,
and probably never shall.

"Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore."

That is all I can do, except reasonably to enjoy all the good I have and
all the happiness I see. Of the latter, I count A.'s being "better