d
bring home the author of "Counterparts" with you? Or did----write the
novels and send them to London, as I fancied when I read them? How
strange that you and I alone to this day should have his secret! I think
our people will never allow genius, without it is alloyed by talent.
But----is paralyzed by his whims, that I have ceased to hope from him.
I could wish your experience of your friends were more animating than
mine, and that there were any horoscope you could not cast from the
first day. The faults of youth are never shed, no, nor the merits, and
creeping time convinces ever the more of our impotence, and of the
irresistibility of our bias. Still this is only science, and must remain
science. Our _praxis_ is never altered for that. We must forever hold
our companions responsible, or they are not companions but stall-fed.

I think, as we grow older, we decrease as individuals, and as if in an
immense audience who hear stirring music, none essays to offer a new
stave, but we only join emphatically in the chorus. We volunteer
no opinion, we despair of guiding people, but are confirmed in
our perception that Nature is all right, and that we have a good
understanding with it. We must shine to a few brothers, as palms or
pines or roses among common weeds, not from greater absolute value, but
from a more convenient nature. But 'tis almost chemistry at last, though
a meta-chemistry. I remember you were such an impatient blasphemer,
however musically, against the adamantine identities, in your youth,
that you should take your turn of resignation now, and be a preacher of
peace. But there is a little raising of the eyebrow, now and then, in
the most passive acceptance,--if of an intellectual turn. Here comes out
around me at this moment the new June,--the leaves say June, though the
calendar says May,--and we must needs hail our young relatives again,
though with something of the gravity of adult sons and daughters
receiving a late-born brother or sister. Nature herself seems a little
ashamed of a law so monstrous, billions of summers, and now the old game
again without a new bract or sepal. But you will think me incorrigible
with my generalities, and you so near, and will be here again this
summer; perhaps with A.W. and the other travellers. My children scan
curiously your E.'s drawings, as they have seen them.

The happiest winds fill the sails of you and yours!

R.W. EMERSON.

In the year 1860, Theodore Parker di