of valor of the absent Preux, but if he be mutilated in one of his first battles, shall he be mistrusted by the brother of his soul, more than if he had been tested in a hundred?  If Britomart finds Artegall bound in the enchanter’s spell, can she doubt therefore him whom she has seen in the magic glass?  A Britomart does battle in his cause, and frees him from the evil power, while a dame of less nobleness might sit and watch the enchanted sleep, weeping night and day, or spur on her white palfrey to find some one more helpful than herself.  These friends in chivalry are always faithful through the dark hours to the bright.  The Douglas motto, “tender and true,” seems to me most worthy of the strongest breast.  To borrow again from Spencer, I am entirely satisfied with the fate of the three brothers.  I could not die while there was yet life in my brother’s breast.  I would return from the shades and nerve him with twofold life for the fight.  I could do it, for our hearts beat with one blood.  Do you not see the truth and happiness of this waiting tenderness?  The verse—­

      “Have I a lover
        Who is noble and free,
      I would he were nobler
        Than to love me,”—­

    does not come home to my heart, though this does:—­

      “I could not love thee, sweet, so much,
        Loved I not honor more.”

* * * ’October 10th, 1840.—­I felt singular pleasure in seeing you quote Hood’s lines on “Melancholy.”  I thought nobody knew and loved his serious poems except myself, and two or three others, to whom I imparted them.[A] Do you like, also, the ode to Autumn, and—­

      “Sigh on, sad heart, for love’s eclipse”?

It was a beautiful time when I first read these poems.  I was staying in Hallowell, Maine, and could find no books that I liked, except Hood’s poems.  You know how the town is built, like a terraced garden on the river’s bank; I used to go every afternoon to the granite quarry which crowns these terraces, and read till the sunset came casting its last glory on the opposite bank.  They were such afternoons as those in September and October, clear, soft, and radiant.  Nature held nothing back.  ’Tis many years since, and I have never again seen the Kennebec, but remember it as a stream of noble character.  It was the first river I ever sailed up, realizing all which that emblem discloses of life.  Greater still would the charm have been to sail downward along an unknown stream, seeking not a home, but a ship upon the ocean.’

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