’Of Ottilia’s, that the afflicted, and ill-educated, are
    oftentimes singled out by fate to instruct others, and her
    beautiful reasons why?

    ’And what have you thought of the discussion touching graves
    and monuments?

’I am now going to dream of your sermon, and of Ottilia’s china-asters.  Both shall be driven from my head to-morrow, for I go to town, allured by despatches from thence, promising much entertainment.  Woe unto them if they disappoint me!

    ’Consider it, I pray you, as the “nearest duty” to answer my
    questions, and not act as you did about the sphinx-song.’

* * * * *

’I have not anybody to speak to, that does not talk common-place, and I wish to talk about such an uncommon person,—­about Novalis! a wondrous youth, and who has only written one volume.  That is pleasant!  I feel as though I could pursue my natural mode with him, get acquainted, then make my mind easy in the belief that I know all that is to be known.  And he died at twenty-nine, and, as with Koerner, your feelings may be single; you will never be called upon to share his experience, and compare his future feelings with his present.  And his life was so full and so still.

Then it is a relief, after feeling the immense superiority of Goethe.  It seems to me as if the mind of Goethe had embraced the universe.  I have felt this lately, in reading his lyric poems.  I am enchanted while I read.  He comprehends every feeling I have ever had so perfectly, expresses it so beautifully:  but when I shut the book, it seems as if I had lost my personal identity; all my feelings linked with such an immense variety that belong to beings I had thought so different.  What can I bring?  There is no answer in my mind, except “It is so,” or “It will be so,” or “No doubt such and such feel so.”  Yet, while my judgment becomes daily more tolerant towards others, the same attracting and repelling work is going on in my feelings.  But I persevere in reading the great sage, some part of every day, hoping the time will come, when I shall not feel so overwhelmed, and leave off this habit of wishing to grasp the whole, and be contented to learn a little every day, as becomes a pupil.

’But now the one-sidedness, imperfection, and glow, of a mind like that of Novalis, seem refreshingly human to me.  I have wished fifty times to write some letters giving an account, first, of his very pretty life, and then of his one volume, as I re-read it, chapter by chapter.  If you will pretend to be very much interested, perhaps I will get a better pen, and write them to you.’ * *

NEED OF COMMUNION.