’It is such a relief to me to be able to speak to you upon a subject which I thought would never lie open between us.  Now there will be no place which does not lie open to the light.  I can always say what I feel.  And the way in which you took it, so like yourself, so manly and noble, gives me the assurance that I shall have the happiness of seeing in you that symmetry, that conformity in the details of life with the highest aims, of which I have sometimes despaired.  How much higher, dear friend, is “the mind, the music breathing from the” life, than anything we can say!  Character is higher than intellect; this I have long felt to be true; may we both live as if we knew it.

* * ’I hope and believe we may be yet very much to each other.  Imperfect as I am, I feel myself not unworthy to be a true friend.  Neither of us is unworthy.  In few natures does such love for the good and beautiful survive the ruin of all youthful hopes, the wreck of all illusions.’

* * * * *

’I supposed our intimacy would terminate when I left Cambridge.  Its continuing to subsist is a matter of surprise to me.  And I expected, ere this, you would have found some Hersilia, or such-like, to console you for losing your Natalia.  See, my friend, I am three and twenty.  I believe in love and friendship, but I cannot but notice that circumstances have appalling power, and that those links which are not riveted by situation, by interest, (I mean, not mere worldly interest, but the instinct of self-preservation,) may be lightly broken by a chance touch.  I speak not in misanthropy, I believe

      “Die Zeit ist schlecht, doch giebts noch grosse Herzen.”

’Surely I maybe pardoned for aiming at the same results with the chivalrous “gift of the Gods.”  I cannot endure to be one of those shallow beings who can never get beyond the primer of experience,—­who are ever saying,—­

        “Ich habe geglaubt, nun glaube ich erst recht,
      Und geht es auch wunderlich, geht es auch schlecht,
        Ich bleibe in glaubigen Orden.”

Yet, when you write, write freely, and if I don’t like what you say, let me say so.  I have ever been frank, as if I expected to be intimate with you good three-score years and ten.  I am sure we shall always esteem each other.  I have that much faith.’

* * * * *

’Jan. 1832.—­All that relates to—­must be interesting to me, though I never voluntarily think of him now.  The apparent caprice of his conduct has shaken my faith, but not destroyed my hope.  That hope, if I, who have so mistaken others, may dare to think I know myself, was never selfish.  It is painful to lose a friend whose knowledge and converse mingled so intimately with the growth of my mind,—­an early friend to whom I was all truth and frankness, seeking nothing but