Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/147

Rh is impossible. All that is wanted is true inward courage, real love, real unconquerable will, and all these you should not want for, for you have the sweetest, loveliest pattern of them unchangeably before you. If you follow that, and accomplish it all, well; yet nothing can be attained without the accomplishment of that inward desire I have for you to-day. God be with you.

In this lies comfort and strength, and joy for the future is in it also. I often long to be able to pass these days with you and your Aunt Rebecca. We expect your father in ten or twelve days from now, but I wish you were coming with him, and then we could sketch from nature together. Lately I have "composed" several pictures—an old castle perched on a rock amid the forest with a perspective stretching away to the plain, then a terrace with an old linden tree and an image of the Virgin beneath it, and last, a solitary mountain lake, with high rocks all round it, and boats is the foreground. Wouldn't you like to try these subjects, and let us compare our skill? Do it, dear Sebastian, and show me when we meet again—very soon, I hope. And God be with you.—Always yours, FELIX M. B.