But as his faith in man and his love of Nature had suffered shipwreck together, it was by the same influence they were restored. From the temporary obscuration of the master vision, the laying asleep of his inner faculties, the first thing to arouse him was the influence of human affection, and that came to him through the presence of his sister, his “sole sister.” When after his return from France he was wandering about aimless and dejected, she saw and understood his mental malady. She made a home for him, and became his hourly companion. If he had labored zealously to cut off his heart from all the sources of his former strength, she by her influence and sympathy maintained for him, as he expresses it, “a saving intercourse with his true self.” She saw that his true vocation was to be a poet, and a teacher of men through poetry, and bade him seek in that alone “his office upon earth.” She took him once more to lonely and beautiful places, till Nature again found access to him, and, combining with his sister’s human ministry, “Led him back To those sweet counsels between head and heart, Whence groweth genuine knowledge fraught with peace.” Thus began that sanative process which in time restored him to his true self, to “his natural graciousness of mind,” and made him that blessing to the world he was destined to become. But there was not a restoration only, but there came through that same sister an accession of new emotions, an opening of his heart to influences heretofore disregarded. His nature was originally, he tells us, somewhat austere and unbending. She opened his eyes to perceive in Nature minute lovelinesses formerly unnoticed, his heart to feel sympathies and tendernesses for human things hitherto uncared for. In her company, whether they wandered about the country or dwelt in a settled home, his former delight in Nature returned. He felt once again, like the breath of spring, visitings of the imaginative power come to him; the overflowings of “the impassioned life” that is in Nature streamed in upon him, and he stood in her presence once more “A sensitive being, a creative soul.” The restoration, the sanative process I speak of, showed itself in two directions, as regards his feeling towards man and towards Nature.