I know a woman who possesses a restless and intelligent mind, interested in her own culture, and earnest to enjoy the highest possible advantages, and I meet her with pleasure as a natural person who not a little provokes me, and I suppose is stimulated in turn by myself.  Yet our acquaintance plainly does not attain to that degree of confidence and sentiment which women, which all, in fact, covet.  I am glad to help her, as I am helped by her; I like very well to know her with a sort of stranger’s privilege, and hesitate to visit her often, like her other Friends.  My nature pauses here, I do not well know why.  Perhaps she does not make the highest demand on me, a religious demand.  Some, with whose prejudices or peculiar bias I have no sympathy, yet inspire me with confidence, and I trust that they confide in me also as a religious heathen at least,—­a good Greek.  I, too, have principles as well founded as their own.  If this person could conceive that, without wilfulness, I associate with her as far as our destinies are coincident, as far as our Good Geniuses permit, and still value such intercourse, it would be a grateful assurance to me.  I feel as if I appeared careless, indifferent, and without principle to her, not expecting more, and yet not content with less.  If she could know that I make an infinite demand on myself, as well as on all others, she would see that this true though incomplete intercourse, is infinitely better than a more unreserved but falsely grounded one, without the principle of growth in it.  For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius.  Such a one will always be rightly tolerant.  It is suicide, and corrupts good manners to welcome any less than this.  I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance.  If you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not dispense with your company.

     My love must be as free
        As is the eagle’s wing,
     Hovering o’er land and sea
        And everything.

     I must not dim my eye
        In thy saloon,
     I must not leave my sky
        And nightly moon.

     Be not the fowler’s net
        Which stays my flight,
     And craftily is set
        T’allure the sight.

     But be the favoring gale
        That bears me on,
     And still doth fill my sail
        When thou art gone.

     I cannot leave my sky
        For thy caprice,
     True love would soar as high
        As heaven is.

     The eagle would not brook
        Her mate thus won,
     Who trained his eye to look
        Beneath the sun.