n Ottilia, this
wicked fairy association conjures up such crowds of less
lovely companions, that I often cease to feel the influence of
the elect one. I don't like Goethe so well as Schiller now.
I mean, I am not so happy in reading him. That perfect wisdom
and _merciless_ nature seems cold, after those seducing
pictures of forms more beautiful than truth. Nathless, I
should like to read the second part of Goethe's Memoirs, if
you do not use it now.'

* * * * *

1832.--I am thinking how I omitted to talk a volume to you
about the "Elective Affinities." Now I shall never say half of
it, for which I, on my own account, am sorry. But two or three
things I would ask:--

'What do you think of Charlotte's proposition, that the
accomplished pedagogue must be tiresome in society?

'Of Ottilia's, that the afflicted, and ill-educated, are
oftentimes singled out by fate to instruct others, and her
beautiful reasons why?

'And what have you thought of the discussion touching graves
and monuments?

'I am now going to dream of your sermon, and of Ottilia's
china-asters. Both shall be driven from my head to-morrow,
for I go to town, allured by despatches from thence, promising
much entertainment. Woe unto them if they disappoint me!

'Consider it, I pray you, as the "nearest duty" to answer my
questions, and not act as you did about the sphinx-song.'

* * * * *

'I have not anybody to speak to, that does not talk
common-place, and I wish to talk about such an uncommon
person,--about Novalis! a wondrous youth, and who has only
written one volume. That is pleasant! I feel as though I could
pursue my natural mode with him, get acquainted, then make my
mind easy in the belief that I know all that is to be known.
And he died at twenty-nine, and, as with Koerner, your feelings
may be single; you will never be called upon to share his
experience, and compare his future feelings with his present.
And his life was so full and so still.

Then it is a relief, after feeling the immense superiority of
Goethe. It seems to me as if the mind of Goethe had embraced
the universe. I have felt this lately, in reading his lyric
poems. I am enchanted while I read. He comprehends every
feeling I have ever had so perfectly, e