This catching at straws of coincidence, where all is geometrical, seems the necessity of certain natures.  It, is true, that, in every good work, the particulars are right, and, that every spot of light on the ground, under the trees, is a perfect image of the sun.  Yet, for astronomical purposes, an observatory is better than an orchard; and in a universe which is nothing but generations, or an unbroken suite of cause and effect, to infer Providence, because a man happens to find a shilling on the pavement just when he wants one to spend, is puerile, and much as if each of us should date his letters and notes of hand from his own birthday, instead of from Christ’s or the king’s reign, or the current Congress.  These, to be sure, are also, at first, petty and private beginnings, but, by the world of men, clothed with a social and cosmical character.

It will be seen, however, that this propensity Margaret held with certain tenets of fate, which always swayed her, and which Goethe, who had found room and fine names for all this in his system, had encouraged; and, I may add, which her own experiences, early and late, seemed strangely to justify.

Some extracts, from her letters to different persons, will show how this matter lay in her mind.

’December 17, 1829.—­The following instance of beautiful credulity, in Rousseau, has taken my mind greatly.  This remote seeking for the decrees of fate, this feeling of a destiny, casting its shadows from the very morning of thought, is the most beautiful species of idealism in our day.  ’Tis finely manifested in Wallenstein, where the two common men sum up their superficial observations on the life and doings of Wallenstein, and show that, not until this agitating crisis, have they caught any idea of the deep thoughts which shaped that hero, who has, without their feeling it, moulded their existence.

’"Tasso,” says Rousseau, “has predicted my misfortunes.  Have you remarked that Tasso has this peculiarity, that you cannot take from his work a single strophe, nor from any strophe a single line, nor from any line a single word, without disarranging the whole poem?  Very well! take away the strophe I speak of, the stanza has no connection with those that precede or follow it; it is absolutely useless. Tasso probably wrote it involuntarily, and without comprehending it himself.”

’As to the impossibility of taking from Tasso without disarranging the poem, &c., I dare say ’tis not one whit more justly said of his, than, of any other narrative poem. Mais, n’importe, ’tis sufficient if Rousseau believed this.  I found the stanza in question; admire its meaning beauty.

’I hope you have Italian enough to appreciate the singular perfection in expression.  If not, look to Fairfax’s Jerusalem Delivered, Canto 12, Stanza 77; but Rousseau says these lines have no connection with what goes before, or after; they are preceded, stanza 76, by these three lines, which he does not think fit to mention.’

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