CORRESPONDENCE. 33 



What new avenues of service for a spirit like his must now be 

 opening! 



But I forbear longer to encroach upon your time, although the 

 theme is so beguiling, and remain, 



My dear sir, 



Most truly yours, 



WILL. ORNE WHITE. 



TRENTON, NEW YORK, DEC. 13, 1880. 



MY DEAR SIR: 



I read in the Christian Register of last week, that 

 it is proposed to hold a meeting of the Essex Institute to-morrow 

 evening, to commemorate the life and literary services of Jones Very. 

 Though I have no claim to be ranked among the "distinguished 

 gentlemen," who are expected to be presented by letter or in person, 

 I cannot refrain from coming, even uninvited, to lay my slight tribute, 

 by letter, at the disposal of those who have charge of this meeting. 

 Different voices, if sincere, may add something to the interest of the 

 occasion. 



I esteem it a very great privilege to have known such a man as 

 Jones Very. I am proud of being his townsman; and it is one of my 

 great regrets that I did not know him more. And yet perhaps I should 

 rather say, that I regret not to have seen him more -^- not to have been 

 oftener in his spiritual atmosphere. For he was to me a perpetual 

 lesson of unworldliness, and this world seemed to exist for him only 

 as the prelude and interpreter of a better world. He was continually 

 (though all unconsciously) preaching to me, how little one really needs 

 of those things which are summed up in the phrase " modern civiliza- 

 tion." In the anchoret's cell still more, in the lonely forest or sea- 

 side, he would have found enough to feed his spirit. He was truly 

 the " voioe of one crying in the wilderness." The very opposite of 

 the nineteenth century, he was here to show that man does not live 

 by bread alone. A special lover of sonnets as I am, Milton's and, 

 Wordsworth's alone can in my judgment be put in the same rank 

 with his ; and even theirs do not lift me into so high a sphere as his. 

 He writes to me, like. one who never borrowed, or needed- to borrow; 

 but who " spake as the spirit gave him utterance." I pretend to no 

 power of literary criticism I can only say what he was, and is, to 

 me. Another evidence has been given us of the life which is Eternal. 

 He must be strangely made, who can think of such a personality as 

 having become extinct, because invisible. To doubt immortality in 

 his case would be justified only by Atheism. But I try in vain to 

 satisfy myself with any estimate of his literary or spiritual excellence. 



ESSEX INST. BULLETIN, VOL. XIII. 3 



