but as I am I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy, the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable frown; neither poetry, nor ambition, nor love have any alertness of countenance: as they pass by me they seem rather like three figures on a Greek vase, two men and a woman, whom no one but myself could distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only happiness, and is a rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the mind.

I have this moment received a note from Haslam, in which he writes that he expects the death of his father, who has been for some time in a state of insensibility; I shall go to town to-morrow to see him. This is the world; thus we cannot expect to give away many hours to pleasure; circumstances are like clouds, continually gathering and bursting. While we are laughing, the seed of trouble is put into the wide, arable land of events; while we are laughing, it sprouts, it grows, and suddenly bears a poisonous fruit which we must pluck. Even so, we have leisure to reason on the misfortunes of our friends our own touch us too nearly for words. Very few men have ever arrived at a complete disinterestedness of mind; very few have been interested by a pure desire for the benefit of others: in the greater part of the benefactors of humanity, some meretricious motive has sullied their greatness, some melo-dramatic scenery has fascinated them. From the manner in which I feel Haslam's misfortune, I perceive how far I am from any

humble standard of disinterestedness; yet this feeling ought to be carried to its highest pitch, as there is no fear of its ever injuring society. In wild nature, the hawk would lose his breakfast of robins, and the robin his worms; the lion must starve as well as the swallow. The great part of men sway their way with the same instinctiveness, the same unwandering eye from their purposes, the same animal eagerness as the hawk; the hawk wants a mate, so does the Man. Look at them both; they set about it and procure one in the same manner: they want both a nest, and they set about one in the same manner. The noble animal, man, for his amusement, smokes a pipe; the hawk balances about the clouds: that is the only difference of their leisures. This is that which makes the amusement of life to a speculative mind. I go among the fields, and catch a glimpse of a stoat or a fieldmouse peeping out of the withered grass; the creature hath a purpose, and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the buildings of a city, and I see a man hurrying along-to what? The creature hath a purpose, and its eyes are bright with it; but then, as Wordsworth says, "We have all one human heart!" There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify; so that among these human. creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism; the pity is that we must wonder after it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. I have no doubt that thousands of people never heard of have had hearts completely disinterested. I can remember but two-Socrates and Jesus. Their histories evince it. What I heard Taylor observe

with respect to Socrates is true of Jesus: that though he transmitted no writing of his own to posterity, we have his mind and his sayings and his greatness handed down to us by others. Even here, though I am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest animal you can think of,—I am, however, young and writing at random, straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness, without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion,― yet in this may I not be free from sin? May there not be superior beings amused with any graceful though instinctive attitude my mind may fall into, as I am entertained with the alertness of the stoat or the anxiety of the deer? Though a quarrel in the street is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel. By a superior being our reasonings may take the same tone; though erroneous, they may be fine. This is the very thing in which consists poetry, and if so, it is not so fine a thing as philosophy, for the same reason that an eagle is not so fine a thing as truth. Give me this credit, do you not think I strive to know myself? Give me this credit, and you will not think that on my own account I repeat the lines of Milton:

"How charming is divine philosophy,

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute."

No, not for myself, feeling grateful, as I do, to have got into a state to relish them properly. Nothing ever comes real till it is experienced; even

Te:

a proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it.

I am afraid that your anxiety for me leads you to fear for the violence of my temperament, continually smothered down; for that reason I did not intend to send you the following sonnet; but look over the two last pages, and ask yourself if I have not that within myself which will bear the buffets of the world. It will be the best comment on my sonnet; it will show you that it was written with no agony but that of ignorance, with no thirst but that of knowledge, when pushed to the point. Though the first steps to it were through my human passions, they went away, and I wrote with my mind and perhaps, I must confess, a little bit of my heart:

Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell:
No God, no Demon of severe response

Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once.
Heart, thou and I are here alone;

I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,

To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.
Why did I laugh I know this Being's lease,
My fancy to its outmost blisses spreads;
Yet would I on this very midnight cease,
And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds;
Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,
But Death intenser - Death is Life's high meed.

I went to bed and enjoyed uninterrupted sleep; sane I went to bed and sane I arose.

April 15th.-You see what a time it is since I wrote; all that time I have been, day after day, ex

pecting letters from you. I write quite in the dark. In hopes of a letter to-day I deferred till night that I might write in the light. It looks so much like rain to-day that I shall not go to town but put it off till to-morrow. Brown this morning is writing some Spencerian stanzas against Miss Brawne and me; so I shall amuse myself with him in the manner of Spenser.

"He is to weet a melancholy carle;

Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair,
As hath the seeded thistle, when a parle
It holds with zephyr, ere it sendeth fair
Its light balloons into the summer air;
Thereto his beard had not begun to bloom,
No brush had touched his chin, or razor sheer;
No care had touched his cheek with mortal doom,

But new he was and bright, as scarf from Persian loom.

"Ne cared he for wine or half and half;

Ne cared he for fish, or flesh, or fowl;

And sauces held he worthless as the chaff;

He's deigned the swine head at the wassail bowl;
Ne with loose ribbalds sat he cheek by jowl;

Ne with sly lemans in the scorner's chair;
But after water-brooks this pilgrim's soul
Panted, and all his food was woodland air;

Though he would oft-times feast on gilliflowers rare.

“The slang of cities in no wise he knew,
Tipping the wink to him was heathen Greek;
He sipped no "olden Tom" or "ruin blue,"
Or Nantz, or cherry brandy, drank full meek
By many a damsel brave, and rouge of cheek;
Nor did he know each aged watchman's beat,
Nor in obscured purlieus would he seek

For curled Jewesses, with ankles neat,

Who, as they walked abroad, made tinkling with their feet." VOL. I.

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