mpathy."

The true intention of poetical teachings like these is in the influence
they have over the feelings. If a star makes me steadier in my labor,
less of a victim to vain agitation, in consequence of Goethe's verses;
if the stars and the sea together renew more fully their mighty charm
upon my heart because those stanzas of Arnold have fixed themselves in
my memory, the poets have done their work. But the more positive
_prosateur_ has his work to do also, and you, as it seems to me, need
this positive help of prose.

You are living a great deal too much like a star, and not enough like a
human being. You do not hasten often, but you _never_ rest, except when
Nature mercifully prostrates you in irresistible sleep. Like the stars
and the sea in Arnold's poem, you do not ask surrounding things to yield
you love, amusement, sympathy. The stars and the sea can do without
these refreshments of the brain and heart, but you cannot. Rest is
necessary to recruit your intellectual forces; sympathy is necessary to
prevent your whole nature from stiffening like a rotifer without
moisture; love is necessary to make life beautiful for you, as the
plumage of certain birds becomes splendid when they pair; and without
amusement you will lose the gayety which wise men try to keep as the
best legacy of youth.

Let your rest be perfect in its season, like the rest of waters that are
still. If you will have a model for your living, take neither the stars,
for they fly without ceasing, nor the ocean that ebbs and flows, nor the
river that cannot stay, but rather let your life be like that of the
summer air, which has times of noble energy and times of perfect peace.
It fills the sails of ships upon the sea, and the miller thanks it on
the breezy uplands; it works generously for the health and wealth of all
men, yet it claims its hours of rest. "I have pushed the fleet, I have
turned the mill, I have refreshed the city, and now, though the captain
may walk impatiently on the quarter-deck, and the miller swear, and the
city stink, I will stir no more until it pleases me."

You have learned many things, my friend, but one thing you have _not_
learned--the art of resting. That stone in Glen Croe ought to have
impressed its lesson on the mind of many a traveller, long before Earl
Russell gave it a newspaper celebrity. Have we not rested there
together, you and I, a little in advance of the coach, which the weary
horses were still slowly