in the senate, in the theatre and in the billiard-room, and she has no
aims, no conversation that can enchant her graceful lord?

He shall have his own society. We can love nothing but nature. The most
wonderful talents, the most meritorious exertions really avail very
little with us; but nearness or likeness of nature,--how beautiful is
the ease of its victory! Persons approach us, famous for their beauty,
for their accomplishments, worthy of all wonder for their charms
and gifts; they dedicate their whole skill to the hour and the
company,--with very imperfect result. To be sure it would be ungrateful
in us not to praise them loudly. Then, when all is done, a person of
related mind, a brother or sister by nature, comes to us so softly and
easily, so nearly and intimately, as if it were the blood in our proper
veins, that we feel as if some one was gone, instead of another having
come; we are utterly relieved and refreshed; it is a sort of joyful
solitude. We foolishly think in our days of sin that we must court
friends by compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its
breeding, and its estimates. But only that soul can be my friend which
I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not
decline and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same
celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience. The scholar
forgets himself and apes the customs and costumes of the man of the
world to deserve the smile of beauty, and follows some giddy girl, not
yet taught by religious passion to know the noble woman with all that is
serene, oracular and beautiful in her soul. Let him be great, and love
shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of
the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane
levity of choosing associates by others' eyes.

He may set his own rate. It is a maxim worthy of all acceptation that a
man may have that allowance he takes. Take the place and attitude which
belong to you, and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It
leaves every man, with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or
driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will certainly accept your
own measure of your doing and being, whether you sneak about and deny
your own name, or whether you see your work produced to the concave
sphere of the heavens, one with the revolution of the stars.

The same reality pervades all teaching. The man may teach by doin