consciousness, How long is the universe to look upon this dreadful
experiment of a malarious planet, with its unmeasurable freight of
suffering, its poisonous atmosphere, so sweet to breathe, so sure to kill
in a few scores of years at farthest, and its heart-breaking woes which
make even that brief space of time an eternity? There can be but one
answer that will meet this terrible question, which must arise in every
thinking nature that would fain "justify the ways of God to men." So
must it be until that

"one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves"

has become a reality, and the anthem in which there is no discordant note
shall be joined by a voice from every life made "perfect through
sufferings."

Such was the lesson into which I lived in those sad yet placid years of
companionship with my suffering and sorrowing friend, in retracing which
I seemed to find another existence mingled with my own.

And now for many months I have been living in daily relations of intimacy
with one who seems nearer to me since he has left us than while he was
here in living form and feature. I did not know how difficult a task I
had undertaken in venturing upon a memoir of a man whom all, or almost
all, agree upon as one of the great lights of the New World, and whom
very many regard as an unpredicted Messiah. Never before was I so
forcibly reminded of Carlyle's description of the work of a newspaper
editor,--that threshing of straw already thrice beaten by the flails of
other laborers in the same field. What could be said that had not been
said of "transcendentalism" and of him who was regarded as its prophet;