to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you
desire to take in this company of the Dead.

"The place you desire," and the place you FIT YOURSELF FOR, I must
also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all
living aristocracy in this:- it is open to labour and to merit, but
to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice
deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no
vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portieres of that
silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief question:- "Do you
deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles?
Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the
conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall
hear it. But on other terms?--no. If you will not rise to us, we
cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, the
living philosopher explain his thought to you with considerate pain;
but here we neither feign nor interpret; you must rise to the level
of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our
feelings, if you would recognise our presence."

This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it is much.
You must, in a word, love these people, if you are to be among them.
No ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. You must love
them, and show your love in these two following ways.

(1) First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into
their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; not to find your own
expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book is not wiser
than you, you need not read it; if he be, he will think differently
from you in many respects.