tself hath a positive more and less; and closed eyes would
seem to obscure the great obscurity of midnight.

There are wounds, which an imperfect solitude cannot heal. By
imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by himself. The perfect
is that which he can sometimes attain in crowds, but nowhere so
absolutely as in a Quaker's Meeting.--Those first hermits did
certainly understand this principle, when they retired into Egyptian
solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's want of
conversation. The Carthusian is bound to his brethren by this agreeing
spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant
as to be reading a book through a long winter evening, with a friend
sitting by--say, a wife--he, or she, too, (if that be probable),
reading another, without interruption, or oral communication?--can
there be no sympathy without the gabble of words?--away with this
inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me,
Master Zimmerman, a sympathetic solitude.

To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of some cathedral,
time-stricken;

Or under hanging mountains,
Or by the fall of fountains;

is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those enjoy, who come
together for the purposes of more complete, abstracted solitude. This
is the loneliness "to be felt."--The Abbey Church of Westminster hath
nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches
of a Quaker's Meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions,

--sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruined sides of kings--

but here is something, which throws Antiquity herself into
the fore-ground--SILENCE--eldest of things--language of old
Night--primitive Discourser--to which the insolent decays of
mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, as we may say,
unnatural progression.

How reverend is the view of these hushed heads,
Looking tranquillity!

Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischievous synod! convocation
without intrigue! parliament without debate! what a lesson dost
thou read to council, and to consistory!--if my pen treat of you
lightly--as haply it will wander--yet my spirit hath gravely felt the
wisdom of your custom, when sitting among you in deepest peace, which
some out-welling tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have
reverted to the times of your beginnings, and the sowings of the seed
by Fox and Dewesbury.--I have witnessed that, whic