. This tempest of doubts and asseverations, of
clouds and of lightnings that flash before the thunder, ending by a
starved yearning for heavenly illumination, throws such a light on the
third phase of his education as enables us to understand it perfectly.
As we read these lines, written at chance moments, taken up when the
vicissitudes of life in Paris allowed, may we not fancy that we see
an oak at that stage of its growth when its inner expansion bursts
the tender green bark, covering it with wrinkles and cracks, when its
majestic stature is in preparation--if indeed the lightnings of heaven
and the axe of man shall spare it?

This letter, then, will close, alike for the poet and the philosopher,
this portentous childhood and unappreciated youth. It finishes off the
outline of this nature in its germ. Philosophers will regret the foliage
frost-nipped in the bud; but they will, perhaps, find the flowers
expanding in regions far above the highest places of the earth.

"PARIS, September-October 1819.

"DEAR UNCLE,--I shall soon be leaving this part of the world,
where I could never bear to live. I find no one here who likes
what I like, who works at my work, or is amazed at what amazes me.
Thrown back on myself, I eat my heart out in misery. My long and
patient study of Society here has brought me to melancholy
conclusions, in which doubt predominates.

"Here, money is the mainspring of everything. Money is
indispensable, even for going without money. But though that dross
is necessary to any one who wishes to think in peace, I have not
courage enough to make it the sole motive power of my thoughts. To
make a fortune, I must take up a profession; in two words, I must,
by acquiring some privilege of position or of self-advertisement,
either legal or ingeniously contrived, purchase the right of
taking day by day out of somebody else's purse a certain sum
which, by the end of the year, would amount to a small capital;
and this, in twenty years, would hardly secure an income of four
or five thousand francs to a man who deals honestly. An advocate,
a notary, a merchant, any recognized professional, has earned a
living for his later days in the course of fifteen or sixteen
years after ending his apprenticeship.

"But I have never felt fit for work of this kind. I prefer thought
to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity. I
am absolutely devoid of the