How fantastic and unpresentable
soever the theory has hitherto seemed, how swiftly shrinking from the
examination of practical men, let us not lose the warning of that
most significant dream. How joyfully we have felt the admonition of
larger natures which despised our aims and pursuits, conscious that a
voice out of heaven spoke to us in that scorn. But it would be
unjust not to remind our younger friends that, whilst this aspiration
has always made its mark in the lives of men of thought, in vigorous
individuals it does not remain a detached object, but is satisfied
along with the satisfaction of other aims. To live solitary and
unexpressed, is painful, -- painful in proportion to one's
consciousness of ripeness and equality to the offices of friendship.
But herein we are never quite forsaken by the Divine Providence. The
loneliest man after twenty years discovers that he stood in a circle
of friends, who will then show like a close fraternity held by some
masonic tie. But we are impatient of the tedious introductions of
Destiny, and a little faithless, and would venture something to
accelerate them.
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