“Mine own Telemachus
      He does his work—­I mine.”

’All do the work, whether they will or no; but he is “mine own Telemachus” who does it in the spirit of religion, never believing that the last results can be arrested in any one measure or set of measures, listening always to the voice of the Spirit,—­and who does this more than ——?

’After the first excitement of intimacy with him,—­when I was made so happy by his high tendency, absolute purity, the freedom and infinite graces of an intellect cultivated much beyond any I had known,—­came with me the questioning season.  I was greatly disappointed in my relation to him.  I was, indeed, always called on to be worthy,—­this benefit was sure in our friendship.  But I found no intelligence of my best self; far less was it revealed to me in new modes; for not only did he seem to want the living faith which enables one to discharge this holiest office of a friend, but he absolutely distrusted me in every region of my life with which he was unacquainted.  The same trait I detected in his relations with others.  He had faith in the Universal, but not in the Individual Man:  he met men, not as a brother, but as a critic.  Philosophy appeared to chill instead of exalting the poet.

’But now I am better acquainted with him.  His “accept” is true; the “I shall learn,” with which he answers every accusation, is no less true.  No one can feel his limitations, in fact, more than he, though he always speaks confidently from his present knowledge as all he has yet, and never qualifies or explains.  He feels himself “shut up in a crystal cell,” from which only “a great love or a great task could release me,” and hardly expects either from what remains in this life.  But I already see so well how these limitations have fitted him for his peculiar work, that I can no longer quarrel with them; while from his eyes looks out the angel that must sooner or later break every chain.  Leave him in his cell affirming absolute truth; protesting against humanity, if so he appears to do; the calm observer of the courses of things.  Surely, “he keeps true to his thought, which is the great matter.”  He has already paid his debt to his time; how much more he will give we cannot know; but already I feel how invaluable is a cool mind, like his, amid the warring elements around us.  As I look at him more by his own law, I understand him better; and as I understand him better, differences melt away.  My inmost heart blesses the fate that gave me birth in the same clime and time, and that has drawn me into such a close bond with him as, it is my hopeful faith, will never be broken, but from sphere to sphere ever more hallowed. * * *

’What did you mean by saying I had imbibed much of his way of thought?  I do indeed feel his life stealing gradually into mine; and I sometimes think that my work would have been more simple, and my unfolding to a temporal activity