As to what regards yourself, I approve altogether of your abandoning what you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man called by sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of hopes into quietness, and a soul set apart and made peculiar to God! We cannot arrive at any portion of heavenly bliss without in some measure imitating Christ; and they arrive at the largest inheritance who imitate the most difficult parts of his character, and, bowed down and crushed underfoot, cry in fulness of faith, "Father, thy will be done."
I wish above measure to have you for a little while here; no visitants shall blow on the nakedness of your feelings; you shall be quiet, and your spirit may be healed. I see no possible objection, unless your father's helplessness prevent you, and unless you are necessary to him. If this be not the case, I charge you write me that you will come.
I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare to encourage gloom or despair. You are a temporary sharer in human miseries that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature. I charge you, if by any means it be possible, come to me.
I remain your affectionate S. T. COLERIDGE.
Thanks, my heart's warm thanks to you, my beloved friend, for your tender letter! Indeed, I did not deserve so kind a one; but by this time you have received my last.
To live in a beautiful country, and to enure myself as much as possible to the labour of the field, have been for this year past my dream of the day, my sigh at midnight. But to enjoy these blessings _near_ you, to see you daily, to tell you all my thoughts in their first birth, and to hear yours, to be mingling identities with you as it were,--the vision-wearing fancy has indeed often pictured such things, but _hope_ never dared whisper a promise. Disappointment! Disappointment! dash not from my trembling hand the bowl which almost touches my lips. Envy me not this immortal draught, and I will forgive thee all thy persecutions. Forgive thee! Impious! _I will bless thee_, black-vested minister of optimism, stern pioneer of happiness! Thou hast been "_the cloud_" before me from the day that I left the flesh-pots of Egypt, and was led through the way of a wilderness--the cloud that hast been guiding me to a land flowing with milk and honey--the milk of innocence, the honey of friendship!