’Do you believe our prayers avail for one another? and that happiness is good for the soul?  Pray, then, for me, that I may have a little peace,—­some green and flowery spot, ’mid which my thoughts may rest; yet not upon fallacy, but only upon something genuine.  I am deeply homesick, yet where is that home?  If not on earth, why should we look to heaven?  I would fain truly live wherever I must abide, and bear with full energy on my lot, whatever it is.  He, who alone knoweth, will affirm that.  I have tried to work whole-hearted from an earnest faith.  Yet my hand is often languid, and my heart is slow.  I would be gone; but whither?  I know not; if I cannot make this spot of ground yield the corn and roses, famine must be my lot forever and ever, surely.’

* * * * *

’I remember how at a similar time of perplexity, when there were none to counsel, hardly one to sympathize, and when the conflicting wishes of so many whom I loved pressed the aching heart on every side, after months of groping and fruitless thought, the merest trifle precipitated the whole mass; all became clear as crystal, and I saw of what use the tedious preparation had been, by the deep content I felt in the result.’

* * * * *

’Beethoven!  Tasso!  It is well to think of you!  What sufferings from baseness, from coldness!  How rare and momentary were the flashes of joy, of confidence and tenderness, in these noblest lives!  Yet could not their genius be repressed.  The Eternal Justice lives.  O, Father, teach the spirit the meaning of sorrow, and light up the generous fires of love and hope and faith, without which I cannot live!’

* * * * *

’What signifies it that Thou dost always give me to drink more deeply of the inner fountains?  And why do I seek a reason for these repulsions and strange arrangements of my mortal lot, when I always gain from them a deeper love for all men, and a deeper trust in Thee?  Wonderful are thy ways!  But lead me the darkest and the coldest as Thou wilt.’

* * * * *

’Please, good Genius of my life, to make me very patient, resolute, gentle, while no less ardent; and after having tried me well, please present, at the end of some thousand years or so, a sphere of congenial and consecutive labors; of heart-felt, heart-filling wishes carried out into life on the instant; of aims obviously, inevitably proportioned to my highest nature.  Sometime, in God’s good time, let me live as swift and earnest as a flash of the eye.  Meanwhile, let me gather force slowly, and drift along lazily, like yonder cloud, and be content to end in a few tears at last.’

* * * * *