informs everything with its complete Loveliness. But we who must seek in
the expression for it, miss its beauty. Critics complain of Tennyson that
he writes no epic, as if all poets must do the same thing. "Comus" is as
Miltonic as the "Paradise Lost;" and the little songs of Shakespeare as
wide and fresh as the dramas. The diamond is no less wonderful than the
world.

Recently my reading has led me into the old English poetry. A friend gave
me a card to the Society Library, the largest in the city; and I have
found much good browsing in those fields. I have found "Amadis de Gaul"
among the rest, and the complete works of Carew, Suckling, Drayton,
Drummond, etc. It has led me to wish some more intimate knowledge of
English history, to which I must turn. How imperceptibly and surely spread
out these meadows where the rare flowers bloom! There is no end to these
threads which place themselves in our hand, and which lead every man of
the world his different way. So we sail on through the blue spaces,
separate as stars.

And you, they tell me, have joined the association. I supposed you were
making some move, and thought this might be it. I am glad that you do so
so heartily, and more glad that I can say so. After all, the defiance
offered us by the varied positions of our friends is what life needs. Each
dissimilar act of my friend, while it does not sever him from me, throws
me more sternly upon myself. Can we not make our friendship so fine that
it shall be only a sympathy of thought, and let the expression differ, and
court it to differ? This ray of the sunlight falls upon summer woods, that
sinks into the wintry sea, yet are they brothers. The severe loneliness
that has sun and moon in its bosom invites us as the vigorous health of
the soul. The beautiful isolation of the rose in its own fragrance is
self-sufficient.