Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

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Then, after a long passage about his plans:

Don't think that I am growing uneasy, for I never was better situated, and don't be afraid that I shall grow unsettled;—

To give room for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide.

By the way, I have been reading Walt and Vult yet again, and with renewed delight. Jean Paul enjoyed the poetry of common life better than any one that has ever written. He made the world he lived in. So did Sir T. Browne; and it is for this, among many other things, that I am so fond of him.

August 19.

Of this you may be sure, that, if ever I am worth knowing, you will know me as well as if I had been close under your wing. Homer says, “The gods know one another, even though they dwell far apart.” It is equally true of men, i. e. men as are men.

Early in the autumn of 1855 Lowell accepted a situation of great trust and great promise in the rolling-mill of the Trenton Iron Company, New Jersey, and felt that he had now really entered on his permanent work. But at this very moment came upon him the great trial of his life. From the beginning of his establisment at Trenton, we cannot but mark in his letters, exceedingly infrequent during his whole stay there, the growing shadow of disease.

In November a friend went over from New York to see him, and found him in his room, bleeding at the lungs and seriously changed. It was necessary that he should withdraw himself immediately from the injurious atmosphere of the iron-mill, and he returned to Cambridge,—an invalid and without occupation. His disease continued through the winter obstinate and alarming; and his physician directed him to give up all work and try the effect of travel and more favoring skies.

A great fabric of noble ambitions fell before this word. In the year of discussion and change through which he had passed, his views of life had gradually cleared, and, at the same time, the beauty of his character had been revealing itself with new distinctness to his nearer friends. The first contact with affairs, so far from extinguishing his higher aspirations, had strengthened his faith in the possibility of his ideal life. He