Hiding their shame—ah God!—in the glare of the public gas-lights? Why, while I feel my ears catching through slumber the run of the streamlet, Still am I pacing the pavement, and seeing the sign for accosting, Still am I passing those figures, not daring to look in their faces? Why, when the chill, ere the light, of the daybreak uneasily wakes me, Find I a cry in my heart crying up to the heaven of heavens, No, Great Unjust Judge! she is purity; I am the lost one. You will not think that I soberly look for such things for sweet Katie; No, but the vision is on me; I now first see how it happens, Feel how tender and soft is the heart of a girl; how passive Fain would it be, how helpless; and helplessness leads to destruction. Maiden reserve torn from off it, grows never again to reclothe it, Modesty broken through once to immodesty flies for protection. Oh, who saws through the trunk, though he leave the tree up in the forest, When the next wind casts it down,—is _his_ not the hand that smote it? This is the answer, the second, which, pondering long with emotion, There by himself in the cottage the Tutor addressed to Philip. I have perhaps been severe, dear Philip, and hasty; forgive me; For I was fain to reply ere I wholly had read through your letter; And it was written in scraps with crossings and counter-crossings Hard to connect with each other correctly, and hard to decipher; Paper was scarce, I suppose: forgive me; I write to console you. Grace is given of God, but knowledge is bought in the market; Knowledge needful for all, yet cannot be had for the asking. There are exceptional beings, one finds them distant and rarely, Who, endowed with the vision alike and the interpretation, See, by the neighbours’ eyes and their own still motions enlightened, In the beginning the end, in the acorn the oak of the forest, In the child of to-day its children to long generations, In a thought or a wish a life, a drama, an epos. There are inheritors, is it? by mystical generation Heiring the wisdom and ripeness of spirits gone by; without labour Owning what others by doing and suffering earn; what old men After long years of mistake and erasure are proud to have come to, Sick with mistake and erasure possess when possession is idle. Yes, there is power upon earth, seen feebly in women and children, Which can, laying one hand on the cover, read off, unfaltering, Leaf after leaf unlifted, the words of the closed book under, Words which we are poring at, hammering at, stumbling at, spelling. Rare is this; wisdom mostly is bought for a price in the market;— Rare is this; and happy, who buys so much for so little, As I conceive have you, and as I will hope has Katie. Knowledge is needful for man,—needful no less for woman, Even in Highland glens, were they vacant of shooter and tourist. Not that, of course, I mean to prefer your blindfold hurry