nfinite will be the delight
when _all_ truth shall burst upon us as ONE beautiful and perfect
whole--each distinct ray harmonising and blending with every other, and
all together forming one mighty flood of radiance!... I can not remember
all the thoughts which have given so much pleasure this evening; I only
know that I have been very happy, and wondered not a little at my late
melancholy. I believe it must have been partly caused by looking at
myself (and that, too, as if I were a little, miserable, isolated
wretch), instead of contemplating those things which have no relation
to space and time and matter--the eternal and the infinite--or, if
I thought of myself at all, feeling that I am part of a great and
wonderful whole. It seems as if a new inner sense had been opened,
revealing to me a world of beauty and perfection that I have never
before seen. I am filled with a strange, yet sweet astonishment.

_Sept. 24, 1837._--I have been profoundly interested in the character of
Goethe, from reading Mrs. Austin's "Characteristics" of him. Certainly,
very few men have ever lived of equally wonderful powers. A thing
most remarkable in him is what the Germans call Vielseitigkeit,
many-sidedness. There was no department of science or art of which he
was wholly ignorant, while in very many of both classes his knowledge
was accurate and profound. Most men who have attained to distinguished
excellence, have done so by confining themselves to a single
department--frequently being led to the choice by a strong, original
bias. Even when this is not the case, there is some _class_ of objects
or pursuits, towards which a particular inclination is manifested;
one loves facts, and devotes himself to observations and experiments;
another loves principles and seeks everywhere to discover a _law_. One
cherishes the Ideal, and neglects and despises the Real, while
another reverses his judgment. We have become so accustomed to this
one-sidedness that it occasions no wonder, and is regarded as the
natural state of the mind. Thus we are struck with astonishment on
finding a mind like Goethe's equally at home in the Ideal and the Real;
equally interested in the laws of poetical criticism, and the theory of
colors, equally attentive to a drawing of a new species of plants, and
to the plan of a railroad or canal. In short, with the most delicate
sense of the Beautiful, the most accurate conception of the mode of its
representation, and the most