Ishmaelite I am, and so shocking your serenity by my ferocities!
I admit you were like an angel to me, and absorbed in the
beautifulest manner all thunder-clouds into the depths of your
immeasurable a ether;--and it is indubitable I love you very
well, and have long done, and mean to do. And on the whole you
will have to rally yourself into some kind of Correspondence with
me again; I believe you will find that also to be a commanded
duty by and by! To me at any rate, I can say, it is a great
want, and adds perceptibly to the sternness of these years: deep
as is my dissent from your Gymnosophist view of Heaven and Earth,
I find an agreement that swallows up all conceivable dissents;
in the whole world I hardly get, to my spoken human word, any
other word of response which is authentically _human._ God help
us, this is growing a very lonely place, this distracted dog-
kennel of a world! And it is no joy to me to see it about to
have its throat cut for its immeasurable devilries; that is not
a pleasant process to be concerned in either more or less,--
considering above all how many centuries, base and dismal all of
them, it is like to take! Nevertheless _Marchons,_--and swift
too, if we have any speed, for the sun is sinking.... Poor
Margaret, that is a strange tragedy that history of hers; and
has many traits of the Heroic in it, though it is wild as the
prophecy of a Sibyl. Such a predetermination to _eat_ this big
Universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of
all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have
not before seen in any human soul. Her "mountain me" indeed:--
but her courage too is high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness
indeed is great; her veracity, in its deepest sense, _a toute
epreuve._--Your Copy of the Book* came to me at last (to my joy):
I had already read it; there was considerable notice taken of it
here; and one half-volume of it (and I grieve to say only one,
written by a man called Emerson) was completely approved by me
and innumerable judges. The rest of the Book is not without
considerable geniality and merits; but one wanted a clear
concise Narrative beyond all other merits; and if you ask here
(except in that half-volume) about any fact, you are answered (so
to speak) not in words, but by a symbolic tune on the bagpipe,
symbolic burst of wind-music from the brass band;--which is not
the plan at all!--What can have become of Mazzini's Lett