rror,
and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of
tranquil wisdom.

Some friends, inspired by an equal love of truth and moral beauty, who
have arrived at the same conviction by different roads, and who view with
serener eye the ground over which they have travelled, have thought that
it might be profitable to present a few of these resolutions and epochs
of thought. They propose to represent these and certain excesses of the
inquiring reason in the form of two young men, of unequal character,
engaged in epistolary correspondence. The following letters are the
beginning of this essay.

The opinions that are offered in these letters can only be true and false
relatively, and in the form in which the world is mirrored in the soul of
the correspondent, and of him only. But the course of the correspondence
will show that the one-sided, often exaggerated and contradictory
opinions at length issue in a general, purified, and well-established
truth.

Scepticism and free-thinking are the feverish paroxysms of the human
mind, and must needs at length confirm the health of well-organized souls
by the unnatural convulsion which they occasion. In proportion to the
dazzling and seducing nature of error will be the greatness of the
triumphs of truth: the demand for conviction and firm belief will be
strong and pressing in proportion to the torment occasioned by the pangs
of doubt. But doubt was necessary to elicit these errors; the knowledge
of the disease had to precede its cure. Truth suffers no loss if a
vehement youth fails in finding it, in the same way that virtue and
religion suffer no detriment if a criminal denies them.

It was necessary to offer these prefatory remarks to throw a proper light
on the point of view from which the following correspondence has to be
read and judged.

LETTER I.

Julius to Raphael. October.

You are gone, Raphael--and the beauty of nature departs: the sere and
yellow leaves fall from the trees, while a thick autumn fog hangs
suspended like a bier over the lifeless fields. Solitary, I wander
through the melancholy country. I call aloud your name, and am irritated
that my Raphael does not answer me.

I had received your last embrace. The mournful sound of the carriage
wheels that bore you away had at length died upon my ear. In happier
moments I had just succeeded in raising a tumulus over the joys of the
past, but now again you stand up bef