firm friendship. Without immediately ordering their labours, he always
influenced them, and often altered their direction and objects. The change
soon evident in the household was remarkable. A simpler, nobler expression
was visible on all the countenances. The voices of the men were deeper,
and yet seemed by their very depth more feminine than before; while the
voices of the women were softer and sweeter, and at the same time more
full and decided. Now the eyes had often an expression as if their sight
was absorbed in the gaze of the inward eyes; and when the eyes of two met,
there passed between those eyes the utterance of a conviction that both
meant the same thing. But the change was, of course, to be seen more
clearly, though not more evidently, in individuals.

"One of the brothers, for instance, was very fond of astronomy. He had his
observatory on a lofty tower, which stood pretty clear of the others,
towards the north and east. But hitherto, his astronomy, as he had called
it, had been more of the character of astrology. Often, too, he might have
been seen directing a heaven-searching telescope to catch the rapid
transit of a fiery shooting-star, belonging altogether to the earthly
atmosphere, and not to the serene heavens. He had to learn that the signs
of the air are not the signs of the skies. Nay, once, his brother
surprised him in the act of examining through his longest tube a patch of
burning heath upon a distant hill. But now he was diligent from morning
till night in the study of the laws of the truth that has to do with
stars; and when the curtain of the sunlight was about to rise from before
the heavenly worlds which it had hidden all day long, he might be seen
preparing his instruments with that solemn countenance with which it
becometh one to look into the mysterious harmonies of Nature. Now he
learned what law and order and truth are, what consent and harmony mean;
how the individual may find his own end in a higher end, where law and
freedom mean the same thing, and the purest certainty exists without the