Canst to devotion’s highest flight sublime
        Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos’ art,
        Dissolve, in purifying tears, the heart,
      Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime;
        The fond illusions of the youth and maid,
      At which so many world-formed sages sneer,
        When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed,
      Our natural religion must appear. 
      All things in thee tend to one polar star,
      Magnetic all thy influences are!’

    ’Some murmur at the “want of system” in Richter’s writings.

      ’A labyrinth! a flowery wilderness! 
        Some in thy “slip-boxes” and “honey-moons”
      Complain of—­want of order, I confess,
        But not of system in its highest sense. 
      Who asks a guiding clue through this wide mind,
      In love of Nature such will surely find. 
        In tropic climes, live like the tropic bird,
      Whene’er a spice-fraught grove may tempt thy stay;
        Nor be by cares of colder climes disturbed—­
      No frost the summer’s bloom shall drive away;
      Nature’s wide temple and the azure dome
      Have plan enough, for the free spirit’s home!’

’Your Schiller has already given me great pleasure.  I have been reading the “Revolt in the Netherlands” with intense interest, and have reflected much upon it.  The volumes are numbered in my little book-case, and as the eye runs over them, I thank the friendly heart that put all this genius and passion within my power.

’I am glad, too, that you thought of lending me “Bigelow’s Elements.”  I have studied the Architecture attentively, till I feel quite mistress of it all.  But I want more engravings, Vitruvius, Magna Graecia, the Ionian Antiquities, &c.  Meanwhile, I have got out all our tours in Italy.  Forsyth, a book I always loved much, I have re-read with increased pleasure, by this new light.  Goethe, too, studied architecture while in Italy; so his books are full of interesting information; and Madame De Stael, though not deep, is tasteful.’

* * * * *

’American History!  Seriously, my mind is regenerating as to my country, for I am beginning to appreciate the United States and its great men.  The violent antipathies,—­the result of an exaggerated love for, shall I call it by so big a name as the “poetry of being?”—­and the natural distrust arising from being forced to hear the conversation of half-bred men, all whose petty feelings were roused to awkward life by the paltry game of local politics,—­are yielding to reason and calmer knowledge.  Had I but been educated in the knowledge of such men as Jefferson, Franklin, Rush!  I have learned now to know them partially.  And I rejoice, if only because my father and I can have so much in common on this topic.  All my other pursuits have led me away from him; here he has much information