in the critical
epochs of a close relation, patience and justice are not qualities on
which we can rely. But the look or the gesture explains things in a
breath; they tell their message without ambiguity; unlike speech, they
cannot stumble, by the way, on a reproach or an allusion that should
steel your friend against the truth; and then they have a higher
authority, for they are the direct expression of the heart, not yet
transmitted through the unfaithful and sophisticating brain. Not long
ago I wrote a letter to a friend which came near involving us in
quarrel; but we met, and in personal talk I repeated the worst of what
I had written, and added worse to that; and with the commentary of the
body it seemed not unfriendly either to hear or say. Indeed, letters
are in vain for the purposes of intimacy; an absence is a dead break in
the relation; yet two who know each other fully and are bent on
perpetuity in love, may so preserve the attitude of their affections
that they may meet on the same terms as they had parted.

Pitiful is the case of the blind, who cannot read the face; pitiful
that of the deaf, who cannot follow the changes of the voice. And
there are others also to be pitied; for there are some of an inert,
uneloquent nature, who have been denied all the symbols of
communication, who have neither a lively play of facial expression, nor
speaking gestures, nor a responsive voice, nor yet the gift of frank,
explanatory speech: people truly made of clay, people tied for life
into a bag which no one can undo. They are poorer than the gipsy, for
their heart can speak no language under heaven. Such people we must
learn slowly by the tenor of their acts, or through yea and nay
communications; or we take them on trust on the strength of a general
air, and now and again, when we see the spirit breaking through in a
flash, correct or change our estimate. But these will be uphill
intimacies, without charm or freedom, to the end; and freedom is the
chief ingredient in confidence. Some minds, romantically dull, despise
physical endowments. That is a doctrine for a misanthrope; to those
who like their fellow-creatures it must always be meaningless; and, for
my part, I can see few things more desirable, after the possession of
such radical qualities as honour and humour and pathos, than to have a
lively and not a stolid countenance; to have looks to correspond with
every feeling; to be elegant and delightful in pers