Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge

the station. He talked very brightly of his experiment, and argued at some length as to how far association could be depended upon as an el

people are determined to action into two classes; and I have connected t

because it is fair; they refrain from action because it is unlovely; they take nothing

own merits because it is good or bad; but because some one that they have loved would have so acted or so refrained from actin

rom him of considerable importance. I give them both.

nis, Au

ear F

sent from my library. It is a very engrossing prospect, this child's mind: it

o anyone of human feelings and real enthusiasm for ideas, uncongenial at first. Erudition touches the human race very little, but on the 'omne ignotum' principle, men are always ready to admire it, and often to pay it highly, and so there is a constant hum of these busy idlers all about the human hive. The man who works a single practical idea into ordinary people's minds, who adds his voice to the cry, 'It is better to giv

your f

ur Ha

explain

is, Sept

ear F

ld be very wrong of me not to answer you fully; so I will take 'health' to

I am either patient or serene yet, but I have long and considerable spaces of both, when I feel content to let God

o hear. I have not told you before, from a culpable reticence; for I believe

day? When I wrote it I was deliberately contemplating an action which I have now g

matters should not shift a little, to take it on the following evening. I made, in fact, most methodical arrangements. I seemed so completely to have missed my mark. The superstitions against the practice I did not regard, as they are merely the produce of a more imaginative and anxious system of morality. I did not se

her intuitions which I have before now successfully followed, so I made my arrangements all day. It gave me a wonderful sense of calm and certainty-there was a feeling of

a full moon, which shone in at the open window

would pass through the house and through the quiet garden to some mysterious home, taking in the earthly impression as it soared past with a single complete undimmed sense-or whether I should step, as it were, strai

spring. It opens by pressing a penknife into on

been broken, and that somehow or other the life-giving fluid ha

to avoid a course-the fact which I developed in my letter to you. And then came the resolve, tardy and weak at first, but gaining ground, warning me that perhaps it was an inglorious flight; though I knew it was pardonable, I felt as

; put him in the way of inward happiness! I break out into prayer and aspirations for him in his presence when I think of the utterly heedless way in which he regards the future, and the awful, the momentous

r garden, and Edward sends his lo

tionate friend,