those in the “Story without an End,” it would make a beautiful little book; but I do not know that this could be done in Boston.  There is much meaning that children could not take in; but, as they would never discover this till able to receive the whole, the book corresponds exactly with my notions of what a child’s book should be.

’I should like to begin the proposed series with a review of Heyne’s letters on German Literature, which afford excellent opportunity for some preparatory hints.  My plans are so undecided for several coming months, that I cannot yet tell whether I shall have the time and tranquillity needed to write out the whole course, though much tempted by the promise of perfect liberty.  I could engage, however, to furnish at least two articles on Novalis and Koerner.  I trust you will be interested in my favorite Koerner.  Great is my love for both of them.  But I wish to write something which shall not only be free from exaggeration, but which shall seem so, to those unacquainted with their works.

’I have so much reading to go through with this month, that I have but few hours for correspondents.  I have already discussed five volumes in German, two in French, three in English, and not without thought and examination.

’Tell—­that I read “Titan” by myself, in the afternoons and evenings of about three weeks.  She need not be afraid to undertake it.  Difficulties of detail may, perhaps, not be entirely conquered without a master or a good commentary, but she could enjoy all that is most valuable alone.  I should be very unwilling to read it with a person of narrow or unrefined mind; for it is a noble work, and fit to raise a reader into that high serene of thought where pedants cannot enter.’

FAREWELL TO GROTON.

’The place is beautiful, in its way, but its scenery is too tamely smiling and sleeping.  My associations with it are most painful.  There darkened round us the effects of my father’s ill-judged exchange,—­ill-judged, so far at least as regarded himself, mother, and me,—­all violently rent from the habits of our former life, and cast upon toils for which we were unprepared:  there my mother’s health was impaired, and mine destroyed; there my father died; there were undergone the miserable perplexities of a family that has lost its head; there I passed through the conflicts needed to give up all which my heart had for years desired, and to tread a path for which I had no skill, and no-call, except that it must be trodden by some one, and I alone was ready.  Wachuset and the Peterboro’ hills are blended in my memory with hours of anguish as great as I am capable of suffering.  I used to look at them towering to the sky, and feel that I, too, from birth, had longed to rise, and, though for the moment crushed, was not subdued.

’But if those beautiful hills,