“Whose window opened towards the rising sun.”
So the happy pilgrim rested, knowing that as soon as there was light anywhere, he should have the first ray. Strange, that every Christian sojourner should not seek a room with windows opening to the dawn! Some of them seem afraid of the sun; they choose a chamber having only a black, northerly outlook, and lie down saying, “What a dreary, miserable world!” And what wonder that they should grow thin and sickly--plants of the shade must ever be so; the soul, as well as the body, needs large draughts of sunshine for vigorous life.
November 27. Since I came to Beverly I have been looking over “Wilhelm Meister” for the first time. I am disappointed in it, and have little respect for Goethe as a man, great as was his genius. Great thoughts he had, and they shine like constellations through the book; artistic, no doubt he was, but everything that relates to principle or right feeling is terribly chaotic, it seems to me. And _Wilhelm_ is an embodiment of high-strung selfishness, under a cloak of generosity and spontaneous good feeling. If I could despise any man, it would be such a one as he.
December 9. God be thanked for the thinkers of good and noble thoughts! It wakes up all the best in ourselves, to come into close contact with others greater and better in every way than we are. Having just made myself the possessor of “Guesses at Truth,” I feel as if I had struck a new mine, or were a privileged traveler into regions hitherto unknown, where there is every variety of natural and cultivated growth, where there are ever recurring contrasts of scenery, and where even the rocks are not barren, but glittering with veins of precious ore. How much better these “thinking books” are than any “sensation books” of any kind, prose or poetry! They are the true intellectual companions. One does not read them, and put them by on the shelf, to be read again one of these days, perhaps,--but they are wanted close at hand, and often.
“No spring nor summer beauty has such grace As I have seen in an Autumnal face.”
The poet Donne wrote so of the mother of “holy George Herbert.” It is so true! and I have seen the same. It would be worth while to live long, to suffer much, to struggle and to endure, if one might have such spiritual beauty blossom out of furrows and wrinkles as has been made visible in aged human faces. Such countenances do not preach,--they are poetry, and music, and irresistible eloquence.