Happy as you are thus far in worthy friends, you are not in much
danger of rash intimacies or great errors. I think, upon the whole,
quite highly of your judgment about people and conduct; for, though
your first feelings are often extravagant, they are soon balanced.
I do not know other faults in you beside that want of retirement of
mind which I have before spoken of. If M------ and A------ want too
much seclusion, and are too severe in their views of life and man, I
think you are too little so. There is nothing so fatal to the finer
faculties as too ready or too extended a publicity. There is some
danger lest there be no real religion in the heart which craves too
much of daily sympathy. Through your mind the stream of life has
coursed with such rapidity that it has often swept away the seed or
loosened the roots of the young plants before they had ripened any
fruit.
I should think writing would be very good for you. A journal of your
life, and analyses of your thoughts, would teach you how to
generalize, and give firmness to your conclusions. Do not write down
merely that things are beautiful, or the reverse; but _what_ they
are, and _why_ they are beautiful or otherwise; and show these
papers, at least at present, to nobody.
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