’To a dear sister I owe that still more exquisite and subtle comradeship which can only exist between man and woman, but from which the more disturbing elements of sex must be absent.  And here, let me also thank God that I was brought up in quite a garden of good sisters.

’To Messrs. C. and W., Solicitors and Notaries, I owe, albeit I will say no thanks to them, the opportunity of that hardly learned good which dwells for those who can wrest it in a hateful taskwork, that faculty of “detachment” which Marcus Aurelius learnt so long ago, by means of which the soul may withdraw, into an inaccessible garden, and sing while the head bends above a ledger; or, in other words, the faculty of dreaming with one side of the brain, while calculating with the other.  Mrs. Browning’s great Aurora Leigh helped me more to the attainment of that than any book I know.

’In their office, too, among many other great things, I learnt that a man may be a good fellow and hate poetry—­possibility undreamed of by sentimental youth; also that Messrs. Bass and Cope are not unworthy of their great reputation; and I had various nonsense knocked out of me, though they never succeeded in persuading me in that little matter of the “ambrosial curls.”

’Through Samuel Dale I first came to understand how “whatever is” can be “best,” and also won a faith in God which I rather caught by infection than gained by any process of his reasoning.  Of all else I owe to Samuel, how write?  He knows.

’To a certain friend, mentioned last because he is not least, I owe:  the sum of ten pounds, and a loving companionship, up hill and down dale, for which again I have no words and no—­sovereigns.’

When I first read through these, I was somewhat surprised at the omission of all reference to books which I know marked most striking periods in Narcissus’ spiritual life:  Sartor Resartus, Thoreau’s Walden, for example, Mr. Pater’s Marius the Epicurean, and Browning’s Dramatis Personae.  As I reflected, however, I came to the conclusion that such omission was but justice to his own individuality, for none of these books had created an initiative in Narcissus’ thought, but rather come, as, after all, I suppose they come to most of us, as great confirming expressions of states of mind at which he had already arrived, though, as it were, but by moonlight.  In them was the sunrise bringing all into clear sight and sure knowledge.

It would seem, indeed, that the growth of the soul in the higher spirits of our race is analogous to the growth of a child in the womb, in this respect:  that in each case the whole gamut of earlier types is run through, before the ultimate form is attained in which it is decreed that the particular vital energy shall culminate.  And, as in the physical world the various ‘halts,’ so to say, of the progress are illustrated by the co-existence and continual succession of those earlier types; so in the world of mind, at every point of spiritual evolution, a man may meet with an historical individuality who is a concrete embodiment of the particular state to which he has just attained.  This, of course, was what Goethe meant when he referred to mysticism as being a frame of mind which one could experience all round and then leave behind.  To quote Whitman, in another connection:—­