between us was removed. I told him how glad I was, and glad likewise that it was effected without. my influence. He had the kindness to say, 'You do not know how much your conduct has influenced me." If I had controverted with him in my imperfect manner he might have refuted me, and never, or not for a long period, have investigated the subject; for we lived away from what I considered religious privileges. But I had the happiness to prove to him that I feared God and regarded man; and he was interested in the foundation of my faith, and felt that it would be a privilege to think with me on a subject of so much importance. I bless God for the result: our religious sympathy was a new bond between us."

In another portion of this memoir, my aunt makes a long quotation from a letter of Miss Sedgwick to herself; one of the sentences seems to have been left incomplete in the original; it is printed just as it stands:

"He always seemed to me more highly gifted in his social powers than almost any one I ever have known. He set a high value on the social relations, affections, and enjoyments. He made them a distinct object of attention. They were not to him incidental and subordinate, as to most professional, active, and busy men. They were not means, but ends; he gave his time and talents to them. His character was fitted for friendship and the tenderest relations. His sound judgment, his rational views, the equanimity and forbearance of his temper, and his pleasant vein of humor, which, if it seldom rose

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239

to wit, was as superior to it for domestic purposes as the ready and benignant smile is to the loud and boisterous laugh. He had a decided love and preference for female society, and that indulgence for us which has marked all the men of noble spirit that I have known."

To Miss Sedgwick's testimony, my aunt adds: "This love of female society I have often heard him dwell upon. He said he did not like to hear women claim equality of talent; they had no need of it. Women were more disinterested, more singlehearted than men (that was his experience among his associates); and they ought to be satisfied with being better, without contesting the question of intellectual equality."

It is hard to take only passages from a biography so perfect; but I close them, as my dear aunt did her memoir, with these lines,—

"And is he dead, whose glorious mind

Lifts thine on high?

To live in hearts we leave behind

Is not to die."

CHAPTER XIII.

Let us be patient! these severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;

Amid these early damps,

What seem to us but dim, funereal tapers,

May be Heaven's distant lamps.

There is no death! what seems so is transition!

This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian,

Whose portal we call death.

We will be patient! and assuage the feeling

We cannot wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing

The grief that must have way.

LONGFELLOW.

AFTER my Uncle Howe's death, my mother

received many letters from friends who had loved and appreciated him. She kept one from Mr. Emerson, with peculiar care.

To Abby she wrote a long letter, pouring all her sorrow into this faithful and sympathizing heart. But I will only extract one passage. After speaking of the loss to those nearest, and to the community, she says: "For our own family I can say that death has taken such a friend and counsellor as the world cannot furnish us with, and left in its place a

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241

deep-rooted sorrow, which I hope may lay the foundation of many virtues. But it is a hard exchange. It is sorrow which marks with strongest impression our experience in this life, much more than any of the joyful occurrences in it. Some author I have lately read observes, 'It is sorrow which teaches us to feel properly for ourselves and for others.' We must feel deeply before we can think rightly. It is not in the tempest and storm of passions that we can reflect, but afterwards, when the waters have gone over the soul; and like the precious gems and the rich merchandise which the wild wave casts upon the shore out of the wreck it has made,— such are the thoughts left by retiring passions. Reflection is the result of feeling. It is from an all-absorbing, heart-rending compassion for one's self, that springs a deeper sympathy for others; and from the sense of our own weakness, and our own selfupbraiding, arises a disposition to be indulgent, to forbear and to forgive. At least, such I believe to be the intention of Providence in permitting sorrow to exist in the world."

Mr. R. W. Emerson to Mrs. Lyman, Divinity Hall, Cambridge, Feb. 11, 1828.

MY DEAR MADAM,- It was very kind of you to think of me again. I have thought of little else lately than the irreparable loss which yourself and your friends and your town have sustained. It will not be the least of the many alleviations of this grievous affliction that it is felt as it should be throughout the community. The world is not so

selfish but that such a bereavement as this is felt as their own by society at large. I do not surely allude to this sympathy as if it yielded a gratification to vanity in the general attention our own calamities excite; but from a far higher reason, that it is grateful to us as justifying our own grief in giving us the testimony of mankind, that our partial affections have not misled our judgments, but that the object on which we have spent our affections, was worthy of them. This makes the value of the unanimous tribute of respect and sorrow that has been paid to the memory of your friend.

I

To me, if it is not idle to speak of myself, his death was a most unexpected disappointment. had rejoiced in my good fortune in making his acquaintance, and looked forward with earnestness to its continuance. His acquaintance was a privilege, which I think no young man of correct feelings could enjoy without being excited to an ambition that he might deserve his friendship. But it has pleased God to remove him.

I cannot but think there is the highest consolation in the occasion of his sickness, and the manner of his death, which have filled up the beauty of his life, and have left nothing to be amended, if they have left much to be desired. In such a death of such a man, if there must be to his family and friends the deepest grief, there must be also to them a feeling of deep and holy joy. There is something in his character which seems to make excessive sorrow unseasonable and unjust to his memory; and all who have heard of his death have