Nay, never falter: no great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.

No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,
The undivided will to seek the good:
'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings
A human music from the indifferent air.
The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
Is to have been a hero. Say we fail !
We feed the high tradition of the world,
And have our spirit in Zincalo breasts.

Good-bye. I must write no more. I have just read in a newspaper review that George Eliot is not a poet. The fact that such a judgment is possible overwhelms me with despair. Will criticism ever cease to be a whim and become a science. Quien sabe?

You can easily imagine, my dear Solomon, from what I have told you, that unceasing efforts are made to preserve in this place the odour, not only of sanctity, but of orthodoxy. Black sheep, however, sometimes creep in; and at present a very black one is at large among the little flock. He rambled into the fold nearly a week ago, and manages to make himself pretty comfortable in spite of the frowns that are cast upon him; indeed he is one of those adaptable people who might truthfully take as their own the motto which Napoleon at Elba vaingloriously chose for himself-ubicumque felix. I think I even see signs that the genial sunniness of his nature is beginning to thaw the ice which at first

surrounded him; for yesterday Mr. Cram selected him to be the recipient of some of his most thrilling (and incredible) Indian experiences; and this morning Mrs. Higgins actually offered him a vacant seat in the carriage which three of the tweedle-dee faction were taking out for a drive. His name is Castleburn, and his blackness consists in the fact that he is a Swedenborgian.

He

is a great lover of out-of-the-way books, and also of those books which are not exactly out of the way, but which never seem to be in the way-which everybody knows about, but which hardly anybody really knows. He is a true thinker, and I have got a good deal out of him; but I have failed to get just the one thing which I thought he would be able to give me: a thorough explanation of Swedenborg's celebrated science of correspondences. Swedenborg, as you know, held the belief, common to many mystical thinkers, that the whole of the visible universe is a collection of signs, or representations, or hieroglyphs of certain spiritual truths. This belief he systematized, and claimed for his system the rank of a science. Not content with the general statement that all things are symbolical and representative, he boldly affirms that the moon corresponds to this, a river to that, and a horse to something else. Now, as in many instances the correspondence between the natural object and the spiritual idea is by no means discernible; is not in fact-so far as I can see—a correspondence at all, but a mere arbitrary conjunction, I

want to discover the rationale of the scheme-the something which gives it a right to the name of a science. For example: a horse, says Swedenborg, as quoted by Emerson, signifies carnal understanding. This may or may not be true; but what I want to know is, why carnal understanding should be signified by a horse, and not by a cow, or a mountain, or an east wind; for there seems no such obvious connection existing between the two as there is, for instance, between heat and love, or between water and purity. This difficulty

I have put before Mr. Castleburn over and over again ; but I can get from him no satisfactory solution of it. He refers me to Swedenborg, and has lent me some of his books which, though full of most interesting matter, leave my special question really unanswered. My firm conviction is, that Swedenborg, though he had proved himself a clever road-maker in his own country, made a great mistake when he thought it possible to lay down a royal road to the spiritual significance of the universe by means of the machinery of any science of correspondences. St. Paul was right when he said that spiritual things are spiritually discerned; and reason and faith seem equally to prompt the thought, that in proportion as a man grows in the knowledge of God-and only in such proportion-will he grow in the knowledge of the Divine symbolism with which every object in the universe is charged. Only as a man knows the Father can he possibly know the meaning of any word of His, whether

that word be written in the plain letters of a book, or in the mysterious hieroglyphs of nature. The God within can alone hold intercourse with the God without. To Peter Bell the primrose by the river's brim will for ever be a primrose, and nothing more; while to William Wordsworth the meanest flower that blows can give "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

The last few fine days have brought several additions to our society, and most of them have been of the right sort. They seem to have produced really a chemical change in the moral and social atmosphere. The most interesting and amusing of these new arrivals is a Mr. Wilks, who is a real character, and whose life has been a perfect romance. He began his career as a shoemaker and a local preacher among the Methodists. At the time of the Chartist agitation he rushed into politics, be- came one of its most notorious supporters in his own part of the country, and very narrowly escaped imprisonment. When Chartism collapsed, he took to lecturing on theology, phrenology, and the literature of labour; and is now established in some town of the north of England, where he keeps a bookseller's shop, and examines people's heads -phrenologically, of course. He is, at present, a sceptic of the most advanced type, but as this fact is not generally known here, he is deservedly popular among the straitest. of our Pharisees. I say deservedly popular, for I believe

him to be a man of real worth; and concerning his entertaining powers there cannot be two opinions. He has seen publicly overhauling the heads of two or three of us, among them that of P. P.; and though my virtues came to the front in rather too imposing a manner, the estimate as a whole seemed very fair. I was very much tickled at being told that I was fitted by nature to be the editor of a newspaper. You ought really to try to get funds to start a Brookfield Gazette, and enable me to take the editorial chair. We should have to get all the spiteful people in the neighbourhood to contribute personalities to make it sell; for, as you know, politics is not my strong point. When I am alone I am always, sure that I am a Liberal of the most fervent order; but whenever I hear popular Liberalism talked I begin to suspect that I am an antiquated Tory. I am sure my organ would play so very unintelligible a tune, that I should get more kicks than halfpence. A few notes from "God save the Queen," alternating between bars of the "Marseillaise," and "A man's a man for a' that," would produce so disturbing an effect on the popular mind, that both the grinder and his instrument would, I fear, come to an untimely end. Still, it seems hard that destiny should be thwarted by a personal peculiarity like this, of which, I suppose, my faithless skull gives no indication.

Wilks has a few books with him, and among them is the "Life of Andrew Combe," by his brother George. I have dipped into it, and have found a few very curious