I have a great personal esteem for you and hope that some day, when I have recovered my balance, we shall meet again.

I hope you will continue to enjoy your travels, only DO remember that Life and Art ARE extremely serious.

Believe me your sincere friend and well-wisher, BENJAMIN BABCOCK P.S.I am greatly perplexed by Luini.
This letter produced in Newman's mind a singular mixture of exhilaration and awe.

At first, Mr.Babcock's tender conscience seemed to him a capital farce, and his traveling back to Milan only to get into a deeper muddle appeared, as the reward of his pedantry, exquisitely and ludicrously just.

Then Newman reflected that these are mighty mysteries, that possibly he himself was indeed that baleful and barely mentionable thing, a cynic, and that his manner of considering the treasures of art and the privileges of life was probably very base and immoral.