Let me tell in briefest words how the spell was broken,—­partially broken.  During those months of passionate exaltation, letters from friends once dear to me had been thrown aside half-read, and wholly valueless.  On the eleventh of November I started,—­as a black seal was to be broken.  My uncle had suddenly died.  The last instalment of his annuity had been paid, and my little sister, an orphan and penniless, was thrown upon me for education and support.  Shame to me that I then hesitated!  Yet it was some hours before I could persuade myself to put the letter into Vannelle’s hand, and say that I must abandon him forever.  Let me forget the bitter temptation.  Of course my friend begged to provide for my sister from his own ample means, and even offered her an asylum at his house.  I still retained sufficient sanity to perceive the wrong of bringing a young child to that dismal place to wither removed from all human companionship and sympathy.  A spirit not in a condition to be sustained and elevated by the society of Herbert would be confused, and finally petrified.  Had this refined probing and questioning deadened all sense of duty?  Was this the end of my Absolute Philosophy, that the intellect should usurp the place of the conscience and the moral law?  Shame to me that I could have paused to ask such questions! yet any claim but one tittle less urgent I should have bantered aside.  I seemed to realize the torture described in the dream of Dante,—­two souls struggling together in one frail body.  I had been applauding good and condemning evil when it cost me nothing but the sentiment; but when the fiery test came, my purpose cracked and shrivelled before it.  Yes, I conquered; but the scars that purchased the victory have ached through my life.

There was but one calling wherein it seemed possible for me to earn my bread; for how could I descend to chaffer in the market, to trim and huckster through the world,—­I, who had thought to condition the Spirit of the Universe?  But there were metaphors faintly shadowing divine things, symbols adapted to the limitations of the popular mind, and with these I might do an honest work for the souls of men. Honest? Yes,—­unless Augustine was a hypocrite, when he declared that he spoke of the Unseen as unity in three persons, less to say something than not to remain altogether silent.  To a certain order of minds among the clergy this is the daily cross,—­the necessity of maintaining a fixed position, and ever looking down from it to teach, instead of ever yearning upward to be taught.

It is enough to say, that, supporting myself and my sister by school-teaching, I achieved such courses of reading as are supposed to qualify for enrolment among the liberal clergy of New England.  Until the time when my sister left me by marriage I was settled at N——­, on the Connecticut.  Soon after this event, died old Dr. P——­ of Foxden, and I received a call to his vacant parish.