’July, 1842.  Boston.—­I have been entertaining the girls here with my old experiences at Groton.  They have been very fresh in my mind this week.  Had I but been as wise in such matters then as now, how easy and fair I might have made the whole!  Too late, too late to live, but not too late to think!  And as that maxim of the wise Oriental teaches, “the Acts of this life shall be the Fate of the next."’

* * * ’I would have my friends tender of me, not because I am frail, but because I am capable of strength;—­patient, because they see in me a principle that must, at last, harmonize all the exuberance of my character.  I did not well understand what you felt, but I am willing to admit that what you said of my “over-great impetuosity” is just.  You will, perhaps, feel it more and more.  It may at times hide my better self.  When it does, speak, I entreat, as harshly as you feel.  Let me be always sure I know the worst I believe you will be thus just, thus true, for we are both servants of Truth.’

* * * * *

’August, 1842.  Cambridge.—­Few have eyes for the pretty little features of a scene.  In this, men are not so good as boys.  Artists are always thus young; poets are; but the pilgrim does not lay aside his belt of steel, nor the merchant his pack, to worship the flowers on the fountain’s brink.  I feel, like Herbert, the weight of “business to be done,” but the bird-like particle would skim and sing at these sweet places.  It seems strange to leave them; and that we do so, while so fitted to live deeply in them, shows that beauty is the end but not the means.

’I have just been reading the new poems of Tennyson.  Much has he thought, much suffered, since the first ecstasy of so fine an organization clothed all the world with rosy light.  He has not suffered himself to become a mere intellectual voluptuary, nor the songster of fancy and passion, but has earnestly revolved the problems of life, and his conclusions are calmly noble.  In these later verses is a still, deep sweetness; how different from the intoxicating, sensuous melody of his earlier cadence!  I have loved him much this time, and taken him to heart as a brother.  One of his themes has long been my favorite,—­the last expedition of Ulysses,—­and his, like mine, is the Ulysses of the Odyssey, with his deep romance of wisdom, and not the worldling of the Iliad.  How finely marked his slight description of himself and of Telemachus.  In Dora, Locksley Hall, the Two Voices, Morte D’Arthur, I find my own life, much of it, written truly out.’

* * * * *

Concord, August 25. 1842.—­Beneath this roof of peace, beneficence, and intellectual activity, I find just the alternation of repose and satisfying pleasure that I need. * * *

    ’Do not find fault with the hermits and scholars.  The true text
    is:—­