h moonlit eyes; run out to find it, and rainbow and golden
cup will have vanished, and left you the beggarly child you were. The
better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth,
that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to
heart. Of our study, there should be in proportion two thirds of
rejection to one of acceptance. And, amid the manifold infatuations
and illusions of this world of emotion, a being capable of clear
intelligence can do no better service than to hold himself upright,
avoid nonsense, and do what chores lie in his way, acknowledging every
moment that primal truth, which no fact exhibits, nor, if pressed by
too warm a hope, will even indicate. I think, indeed, it is part of
our lesson to give a formal consent to what is farcical, and to
pick up our living and our virtue amid what is so ridiculous, hardly
deigning a smile, and certainly not vexed. The work is done through
all, if not by every one.

_Free Hope._ Thou art greatly wise, my friend, and ever respected by
me, yet I find not in your theory or your scope room enough for the
lyric inspirations or the mysterious whispers of life. To me it
seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self, than often to be
infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive, and a slave, than always
to walk in armor. As to magnetism, that is only a matter of fancy. You
sometimes need just such a field in which to wander vagrant, and if it
bear a higher name, yet it may be that, in last result, the trance of
Pythagoras might be classed with the more infantine transports of the
Seeress of Prevorst.

What is done interests me more than what is thought and supposed.
Every fact is impure, but every fact contains in it the juices of
life. Every fact is a clod, from which may grow an amaranth or a palm.

Climb you the snowy peaks whence come the streams, where the
atmosphere is rare, where you can see the sky nearer, from which you
can get a commanding view of the landscape? I see great disadvantages
as well as advantages in this dignified position. I had rather walk
myself through all kinds of places, even at the risk of being robbed
in the forest, half drowned at the ford, and covered with dust in the
street.

I would beat with the living heart of the world, and understand all
the moods, even the fancies or fantasies, of nature. I dare to
trust to the interpreting spirit to bring me out all right at
last,--establish truth through