They seek in her an accessary,
and not a reproof. It is less a sympathy with Nature than a sympathy with
ourselves as we compel her to reflect us. It is solitude, Nature for her
estrangement from man, not for her companionship with him,--it is
desolation and ruin, Nature as she has triumphed over man,--with which
this order of mind seeks communion and in which it finds solace. It is
with the hostile and destructive power of matter, and not with the spirit
of life and renewal that dwells in it, that they ally themselves. And in
human character it is the same. St. Preux, Rene, Werther, Manfred,
Quasimodo, they are all anomalies, distortions, ruins,--so much easier is
it to caricature life from our own sickly conception of it, than to paint
it in its noble simplicity; so much cheaper is unreality than truth.
Every man is conscious that he leads two lives,--the one trivial and
ordinary, the other sacred and recluse; one which he carries to society
and the dinner-table, the other in which his youth and aspiration survive
for him, and which is a confidence between himself and God. Both may be
equally sincere, and there need be no contradiction between them, any
more than in a healthy man between soul and body. If the higher life be
real and earnest, its result, whether in literature or affairs, will be
real and earnest too.
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