with what firmness we can. I hear with pain that your Wife, whom
I have only seen beaming goodness and intelligence, has suffered
and suffers so severely. I recall my first visit to your house,
when I pronounced you wise and fortunate in relations wherein
best men are often neither wise nor fortunate. I had already
heard rumors of her serious illness. Send me word, I pray you,
that there is better health and hope. For the rest, the Colonna
motto would fit your letter, "Though sad, I am strong."

I had received in July, forwarded by Stanley, on his flight
through Boston, the fourth Volume of _Friedrich,_ and it was my
best reading in the summer, and for weeks my only reading: One
fact was paramount in all the good I drew from it, that
whomsoever many years had used and worn, they had not yet broken
any fibre of your force:--a pure joy to me, who abhor the inroads
which time makes on me and on my friends. To live too long is
the capital misfortune, and I sometimes think, if we shall not
parry it by better art of living, we shall learn to include in
our morals some bolder control of the facts. I read once, that
Jacobi declared that he had some thoughts which--if he should
entertain them--would put him to death: and perhaps we have
weapons in our intellectual armory that are to save us from
disgrace and impertinent relation to the world we live in. But
this book will excuse you from any unseemly haste to make up your
accounts, nay, holds you to fulfil your career with all amplitude
and calmness. I found joy and pride in it, and discerned a
golden chain of continuity not often seen in the works of men,
apprising me that one good head and great heart remained in
England,--immovable, superior to his own eccentricities and
perversities, nay, wearing these, I can well believe, as a jaunty