A profound intellect is weakened and narrowed in general power and influence by a limited range of sympathies. I think this is especially true of C——: excellent, honest, gifted as he is, he does not do half the good he might do, because his sympathies are so confined. And then he wants gentleness: he does not seem to acknowledge that “the wisdom that is from above is _gentle_.” He is a man who carries his bright intellect as a light in a dark-lantern; he sees only the objects on which he chooses to throw that blaze of light: those he sees vividly, but, as it were, exclusively. All other things, though lying near, are dark, because perversely he _will_ not throw the light of his mind upon them. [Illustration] 8. Wilhelm von Humboldt says, “Old letters lose their vitality.” Not true. It is because they retain their vitality that it is so dangerous to keep some letters,—so wicked to burn others. [Illustration] 9. A Man thinks himself, and is thought by others to be insulted when another man gives him the lie. It is an offence to be retracted at once, or only to be effaced in blood. To give a woman the lie is not considered in the same unpardonable light by herself or others,—is indeed a slight thing. Now, whence this difference? Is not truth as dear to a woman as to a man? Is the virtue itself, or the reputation of it, less necessary to the woman than to the man? If not, what causes this distinction,—one so injurious to the morals of both sexes? [Illustration] 10. It is good for us to look up, morally and mentally. If I were tired I would get some help to hold my head up, as Moses got some one to hold up his arms while he prayed. “Ce qui est moins que moi m’éteint et m’assomme; ce qui est à côté de moi m’ennuie et me fatigue. II n’y a que ce qui est au-dessus de moi qui me soutienne et m’arrache à moi-même.” [Illustration] 11. There is an order of writers who, with characters perverted or hardened through long practice of iniquity, yet possess an inherent divine sense of the good and the beautiful, and a passion for setting it forth, so that men’s hearts glow with the tenderness and the elevation which live not in the heart of the writer,—only in his head. And there is another class of writers who are excellent in the social relations of life, and kindly and true in heart, yet who, intellectually, have a perverted pleasure in the ridiculous and distorted, the cunning, the crooked, the vicious,—who are never weary of holding up before us finished representations of folly and rascality. Now, which is the worst of these? the former, who do mischief by making us mistrust the good? or the latter, who degrade us by making us familiar with evil? [Illustration] 12. “Thought and theory,” said Wordsworth, “must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.”