ll God the Beautiful, who daily showeth
himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and
yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely and the
noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who
understands me, becomes mine,--a possession for all time. Nor is Nature
so poor but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we weave
social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many thoughts
in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by and by stand in a
new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims in
a traditionary globe. My friends have come to me unsought. The great God
gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with
itself, I find them, or rather not I but the Deity in me and in them
derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, relation,
age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many
one. High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world
for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my
thoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard,--poetry without
stop,--hymn, ode and epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Muses
chanting still. Will these too separate themselves from me again, or
some of them? I know not, but I fear it not; for my relation to them
is so pure, that we hold by simple affinity, and the Genius of my life
being thus social, the same affinity will exert its energy on whomsoever
is as noble as these men and women, wherever I may be.

I confess to an extreme tenderness of nature on this point. It is almost
dangerous to me to "crush the sweet poison of misused wine" of the
affections. A new person is to me a great event and hinders me from
sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which have given
me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit.
Thought is not born of it; my action is very little modified. I must
feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine, and a
property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the
lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the
conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness,
his nature finer, his temptations less. Every thing that is his,--his
name, his form, his dress, books and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our
own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.