liance that should go in practice
to making the man independent of the human race, or else a religion of
love. Now he hardly seems entitled to marry; for how can he protect a
woman, who cannot protect himself?

We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall
not be, if there is anything good in you. Dante was very bad company,
and was never invited to dinner. Michel Angelo had a sad, sour time of
it. The ministers of beauty are rarely beautiful in coaches and
saloons. Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself. Yet
each of these potentates saw well the reason of his exclusion.
Solitary was he? Why, yes; but his society was limited only
by the amount of brain Nature appropriated in that age to carry on the
government of the world. "If I stay," said Dante, when there was
question of going to Rome, "who will go? and if I go, who will stay?"

But the necessity of solitude is deeper than we have said, and is
organic. I have seen many a philosopher whose world is large enough
for only one person. He affects to be a good companion; but we are
still surprising his secret, that he means and needs to impose his
system on all the rest. The determination of each is _from_ all
the others, like that of each tree up into free space. 'Tis no wonder,
when each has his whole head, our societies should be so small. Like
President Tyler, our party falls from us every day, and we must ride
in a sulky at last. Dear heart! take it sadly home to thee, there is
no cooeperation. We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a
reconnoitring and recruiting of the holy fraternity that shall combine
for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of
united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not
resolve, and the dearest friends are separated by impassable
gulfs. The cooeperation is involuntary, and is put upon us by the
Genius of Life, who reserves this as a part of his prerogative. 'Tis
fine for us to talk: we sit and muse, and are serene, and complete;
but the moment we meet with anybody, each becomes a fraction.

Though the stuff of tragedy and of romances is in a moral union of two
superior persons, whose confidence in each other for long years, out
of sight, and in sight, and against all appearances, is at last
justified by victorious proof of probity to gods and men, causing
joyful emotions, tears, and glory,--though there be for heroes this
_moral union_, yet they, too, a