and from which perhaps it
could not be separated. And he was exposed (as often happens) to the
very description of trials that were least in harmony with his defects.
Few dispositions could have run a career like his, and have remained
unscathed. But one less tender than his own would have been less soured
by it. For many years, he bore about with him the consciousness of
unacknowledged talent. The world cannot be blamed for not appreciating
that which had never been revealed. But we know not what the jostling
and elbowing of that world, in the meantime, may have been to him--how
often he may have felt himself unworthily treated--or how far that
treatment may have preyed upon and corroded his heart. Who shall
say that with this consciousness there did not mingle a quick and
instinctive perception of the hidden motives of action,--that he did
not sometimes detect, where others might have been blind, the
under-shuffling of the hands, in the by-play of the world?

Through all his writings, and throughout his correspondence, there are
beautiful proofs of the tenderness of his feelings,--the most essential
quality, perhaps, in any writer. It is at least, one that if not
possessed, can never be attained. The familiarity of his imagination
with natural objects, when he was living far removed from them, is
remarkable, and often affecting.

"I have arranged," he says to Mr. Henin, his friend and patron, "very
interesting materials, but it is only with the light of Heaven over
me that I can recover my strength. Obtain for me a _rabbit's hole_, in
which I may pass the summer in the country." And again, "With the _first
violet_, I shall come to see you." It is soothing to find, in passages
like these, such pleasing and convincing evidence that

"Nature never did betray,
The heart that loved her."

In the noise of a great city, in the midst of annoyances of many kinds
these images, impressed with quietness and beauty, came back to the mind
of St. Pierre, to cheer and animate him.

In alluding to his miseries, it is but fair to quote a passage from
his "Voyage," which reveals his fond remembrance of his native land. "I
should ever prefer my own country to every other," he says, "not because
it was more beautiful, but because I was brought up in it. Happy he,
who sees again the places where all was loved, and all was lovely!--the
meadows in which he played, and the orchard that he robbed!"

He returned to this country