Now you must know that there are a great many things which interest me, to some of which this or that particular class of readers may be totally indifferent.  I love Nature, and human nature, its thoughts, affections, dreams, aspirations, delusions,—­Art in all its forms,—­virtu in all its eccentricities,—­old stories from black-letter volumes and yellow manuscripts, and new projects out of hot brains not yet imbedded in the snows of age.  I love the generous impulses of the reformer; but not less does my imagination feed itself upon the old litanies, so often warmed by the human breath upon which they were wafted to Heaven that they glow through our frames like our own heart’s blood.  I hope I love good men and women; I know that they never speak a word to me, even if it be of question or blame, that I do not take pleasantly, if it is expressed with a reasonable amount of human kindness.

I have before me at this time a beautiful and affecting letter, which I have hesitated to answer, though the postmark upon it gave its direction, and the name is one which is known to all, in some of its representatives.  It contains no reproach, only a delicately-hinted fear.  Speak gently, as this dear lady has spoken, and there is no heart so insensible that it does not answer to the appeal, no intellect so virile that it does not own a certain deference to the claims of age, of childhood, of sensitive and timid natures, when they plead with it not to look at those sacred things by the broad daylight which they see in mystic shadow.  How grateful would it be to make perpetual peace with these pleading saints and their confessors, by the simple act that silences all complainings!  Sleep, sleep, sleep! says the Arch-Enchantress of them all,—­and pours her dark and potent anodyne, distilled over the fires that consumed her foes,—­its large, round drops changing, as we look, into the beads of her convert’s rosary!  Silence! the pride of reason! cries another, whose whole life is spent in reasoning down reason.

I hope I love good people, not for their sake, but for my own.  And most assuredly, if any deed of wrong or word of bitterness led me into an act of disrespect towards that enlightened and excellent class of men who make it their calling to teach goodness and their duty to practise it, I should feel that I had done myself an injury rather than them.  Go and talk with any professional man holding any of the medieval creeds, choosing one who wears upon his features the mark of inward and outward health, who looks cheerful, intelligent, and kindly, and see how all your prejudices melt away in his presence!  It is impossible to come into intimate relations with a large, sweet nature, such as you may often find in this class, without longing to be at one with it in all its modes of being and believing.  But does it not occur to you that one may love truth as he sees it, and his race as he views it, better than even the sympathy and approbation of many good men whom he honors,—­better than sleeping to the sound of the Miserere or listening to the repetition of an effete Confession of Faith?