NATURE TO THE INVALID.

“O mighty love! Man is one world and hathAnother to attend him!”George Herbert.

“Let us find room for this great guest in our small houses.”Emerson.

“Shut not so soon! The dull-eyed nightHas not as yet begunTo make a seizure of the light,Or to seal up the sun.”Herrick.

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Whenan invalid is under sentence of disease for life, it becomes a duty of first-rate importance to select a proper place of abode. This is often overlooked; and a sick prisoner goes on to live where he lived before, for no other reason than because he lived there before. Many a sufferer languishes amidst street noises, or passes year after year in a room whose windows command dead walls, or paved courts, or some such objects; so that he sees nothing of Nature but such sky and stars as show themselves above the chimney-tops. I remember the heart-ache it gave me to see a youth, confined to a recumbent posture for two or three years, lying in a room whence he could see nothing, and dependent therefore onthe cage of birds by his bed-side, and the flowers his friends sent him, for the only notices of Nature that reached him, except the summer’s heat and winter’s cold. There was no sufficient reason why he should not have been placed where he could overlook fields, or even the sea.

If a healthy man, entering upon a temporary imprisonment, hangs his walls with a paper covered with roses, and every one sympathises in this forethought for his mind’s health, much more should the invalid, (who, though he must be a prisoner, has yet liberty of choice where his prison shall be,) provide for sustaining and improving his attachment to Nature, and for beguiling his sufferings, by the unequalled refreshments she affords. He will be wise to sacrifice indolence, habit, money and convenience, at the outset, to place himself where he can command the widest or the most beautiful view that can be had without sacrificing advantages more essential still. There are few things more essential still: but there are some;—such as medical attendance, and a command of the ordinary conveniences of life.

What is the best kind of view for a sick prisoner’s windows to command? I have chosen the sea, and am satisfied with my choice. We should have the widest expanse of sky, for night scenery. We should have a wide expanse of land or water, for the sake of a sense of liberty, yet more than for variety; and also because then the inestimable help of a telescope may be called in. Think of the difference to us between seeing from our sofas the width of a street, even if it be Sackville-street, Dublin, or Portland Place, in London, and thirty miles of sea view, with its long boundary of rocks, and the power of sweeping our glance over half a county, by means of a telescope! But the chief ground of preference of the sea is less its space than its motion, and the perpetual shifting of objects caused by it. There can be nothing in inland scenery which can give the sense of life and motion and connexion with the world like sea changes. The motion of a waterfall is too continuous,—too little varied,—as the breaking of the waves would be, if that were all the sea could afford. The fitful action of a windmill,—the waving of trees, the ever-changing aspects of mountains are good and beautiful: but there is something more life-like in the going forth andreturn of ships, in the passage of fleets, and in the never-ending variety of a fishery.

But then, there must not be too much sea. The strongest eyes and nerves could not support the glare and oppressive vastness of an unrelieved expanse of waters. I was aware of this in time, and fixed myself where the view of the sea was inferior to what I should have preferred, if I had come to the coast for a summer visit. Between my window and the sea is a green down, as green as any field in Ireland; and on the nearer half of this down, haymaking goes forward in its season. It slopes down to a hollow, where the Prior of old preserved his fish, there being sluices formerly at either end, the one opening upon the river, and the other upon the little haven below the Priory, whose ruins still crown the rock. From the Prior’s fish-pond, the green down slopes upwards again to a ridge; and on the slope are cows grazing all summer, and half way into the winter. Over the ridge, I survey the harbour and all its traffic, the view extending from the light-houses far to the right, to a horizon of sea to the left. Beyond the harbour lies another county, with, first, its sandy beach, where there are frequent wrecks—toointeresting to an invalid,—and a fine stretch of rocky shore to the left; and above the rocks, a spreading heath, where I watch troops of boys flying their kites; lovers and friends taking their breezy walk on Sundays; the sportsman with his gun and dog; and the washerwomen converging from the farm-houses on Saturday evenings, to carry their loads, in company, to the village on the yet further height. I see them, now talking in a cluster, as they walk each with her white burden on her head, and now in file, as they pass through the narrow lane; and finally they part off on the village green, each to some neighbouring house of the gentry. Behind the village and the heath, stretches the rail-road; and I watch the train triumphantly careering along the level road, and puffing forth its steam above hedges and groups of trees, and then labouring and panting up the ascent, till it is lost between two heights, which at last bound my view. But on these heights are more objects; a windmill, now in motion and now at rest; a lime-kiln, in a picturesque rocky field; an ancient church tower, barely visible in the morning, but conspicuous when the setting sun shines upon it; a colliery, with its lofty wagonway, and the self-moving wagons running hither and thither, as if in pure wilfulness; and three or four farms, at various degrees of ascent, whose yards, paddocks, and dairies I am better acquainted with than their inhabitants would believe possible. I know every stack of the one on the heights. Against the sky I see the stacking of corn and hay in the season, and can detect the slicing away of the provender, with an accurate eye, at the distance of several miles. I can follow the sociable farmer in his summer-evening ride, pricking on in the lanes where he is alone, in order to have more time for the unconscionable gossip at the gate of the next farm-house, and for the second talk over the paddock-fence of the next, or for the third or fourth before the porch, or over the wall, when the resident farmer comes out, pipe in mouth, and puffs away amidst his chat, till the wife appears, with a shawl over her cap, to see what can detain him so long; and the daughter follows, with her gown turned over head (for it is now chill evening), and at last the sociable horseman finds he must be going, looks at his watch, and, with a gesture of surprise, turns his steed down a steep broken way to the beach, and canters home overthe sands, left hard and wet by the ebbing tide, the white horse making his progress visible to me through the dusk. Then, if the question arises which has most of the gossip spirit, he or I, there is no shame in the answer. Any such small amusement is better than harmless—is salutary—which carries the spirit of the sick prisoner abroad into the open air, and among country people. When I shut down my window, I feel that my mind has had an airing.

But there are many times when these distant views cannot be sought; when we are too languid for any objects that do not present themselves near at hand. Here, too, I am provided. I overlook gardens, and particularly a well-managed market-garden, from which I have learned, and enjoyed, not a little. From the radish-sowing in early spring, to the latest turnip and onion cropping, I watch the growth of everything, and hence feel an interest in the frosts and rain, which I should otherwise not dream of. A shower is worth much to me when the wide potato-beds, all dry and withering in the morning, are green and fresh in the evening light; and the mistress of the garden, bringing up her pails of frothing milk from thecow-house, looks about her with complacency, and comes forth with fresh alacrity to cut the young lettuces which are sent for, for somebody’s supper of cold lamb.

The usual drawback of a sea-side residence is the deficiency of trees. I see none (except through the telescope) but one shabby sycamore, which grows between my eye and the chimney of the baths in the haven. But this is not a pure disadvantage. I may see less beauty in summer, but I also see less dreariness in winter.

The winter beauty of the coast is a great consideration. The snow does not lie; at least rarely for more than a very few hours; and then it has no time to lose its lustre. When I look forth in the morning, the whole land may be sheeted with glittering snow, while the myrtle-green sea swells and tumbles, forming an almost incredible contrast to the summer aspect of both, and even to the afternoon aspect; for before sunset the snow is gone, except in the hollows; all is green again on shore, and the waves are lilac, crested with white. My winter pleasures of this kind were, at first, a pure surprise to me. I had spent every winter of my life in a town; and here, how different it is!The sun shines into my room from my hour of rising till within a few minutes of dusk, and this, almost by settled custom, till February, our worst month. The sheeny sea, swelling in orange light, is crossed by fishing-boats, which look black by contrast, and there is none of the deadness of winter in the landscape; no leafless trees, no locking up with ice; and the air comes in through my open upper sash brisk, but sun-warmed. The robins twitter and hop in my flower-boxes, outside the window; and the sea-birds sit on the water, or cluster on the spits of sand left by the tide. Within-doors, all is gay and bright with flowering narcissus, tulips, crocus, and hyacinths. And at night, what a heaven! What an expanse of stars above, appearing more steadfast, the more the Northern Lights dart and quiver! And what a silvery sheet of moonlight below, crossed by vessels more black than those which looked blackest in the golden sea of the morning! It makes one’s very frame shiver with a delicious surprise to look, (and the more, the oftener one looks,) at a moonlit sea through the telescope; at least, it is so with one who can never get near the object in any other way. I doubt whether there be any inland spectacle so singularand stirring, except that which is common to both, a good telescopic view of the planets. This transcends all. It is well to see by day, the shadows of walkers on the wet sands; the shadows of the sails of a windmill on the sward; the shadow of rocks in a deep sea cave; but far beyond this is it to see the shadow of the disk of Saturn on his rings. How is it that so many sick prisoners are needlessly deprived of all these sights; shut up in a street of a town? What is there there, that can compensate them for what they lose?

There is some set-off to the winter privileges I have spoken of, in an occasional day of storms; perhaps two or three in each season. These are very dreary while they last; though, considering the reaction, the next fine day, salutary on the whole. On these days, the horror of the winds is great. One’s very bed shakes under them; and some neighbour’s house is pretty sure to be unroofed. The window-cushions must be removed, because nothing can keep out the rain, not even the ugly array of cloths laid over all the sashes. The rain and spray seem to ooze through the very glass. The wet comes through to the ceiling, however perfect the tiling. The splash and dashagainst the panes are wearing to the nerves. Balls of foam drive, like little balloons, over the garden; and, sooner or later in the day, we see the ominous rush of men and boys to the rocks and the ridge, and we know that there is mischief. We see either a vessel labouring over the bar, amidst an universal expectation that she will strike; or we see, by a certain slope of the masts, that she is actually on the rocks; or she drives wilfully over to the sands, in spite of all the efforts of steam-tugs and her own crew; and then come forth the life-boats, which we cannot help watching, but which look as if they must themselves capsize, and increase the misery instead of preventing it. Then, when the crew are taken from the rigging, and carried up to the port, ensues the painful sight of the destruction of the vessel; parties, or files of women, boys, and men, passing along the ridge or the sands with the spoils; bundles of sailcloth, armsful of spars, shoulder-loads of planks; while, in the midst, there is sure to be a report, false or true, of a vessel having foundered, somewhere near at hand. On such days, it is a relief to bar the shutters at length, and close the curtains, and light the lamp, and, if the wind will allow, to forget thehistory of the day. Still more thankful are we to go to bed—I can hardly say to rest—for invalids are liable to a return in the night of the painful impressions of noon, with exaggerations, unless the agitation has been such as to wear them out with fatigue. But, as I said, such days are very few. Two or three such in a year, and two or three weeks of shifting sea-fog in spring, are nearly all the drawbacks we have; nearly the only obscurations of Nature’s beauties.

How different are “the seasons, and their change,” to us, and to the busy inhabitants of towns! How common is it for townspeople to observe, that the shortest day is past without their remembering it was so near! or the equinox, or even the longest day! Whereas, we sick watchers have, as it were, a property in the changes of the seasons, and even of the moon. It is a good we would not sell for any profit, to say to ourselves, at the end of March, that the six months of longest days are now before us; that we are entering upon a region of light evenings, with their soft lulling beauties; and of short nights, when, late as we go to rest, we can almost bid defiance to horrors, and the depressions of darkness. There is a monthlyspring of the spirits too, when the young moon appears again, and we have the prospect of three weeks’ pleasure in her course, if the sky be propitious. I have often smiled in detecting in myself this sense of property in such shows; in becoming aware of a sort of resentment, of feeling of personal grievance, when the sky is not propitious; when I have no benefit of the moon for several nights together, through the malice of the clouds, or the sea-haze in spring. But, now I have learned by observation where and when to look for the rising moon, what a superb pleasure it is to lie watching the sea-line, night after night, unwilling to shut the window, to leave the window-couch, to let the lamp be lighted, till the punctual and radiant blessing comes, answering to my hope, surpassing my expectation, and appearing to greet me with express and consolatory intent! Should I actually have quitted life without this set of affections, if I had not been ill? I believe it. And, moreover, I believe that my interest in these spectacles of Nature has created a new regard to them in others. I see a looking out for the rising moon among the neighbours, who have possessed the same horizon-line all their lives, but did not know its value tillthey saw what it is to me. I observe the children from the cottage swinging themselves up to obtain a peep over the palings, when they see me on the watch in the window; and an occasional peep at a planet, through my telescope, appears to dress the heavens in quite a new light to such as venture to take a look.

They do not know, however, anything of my most thrilling experience of these things—for it happens when they are all at rest. I keep late hours, (for the sake of husbanding my seasons of ease;) and now and then I have nerve enough to look abroad for my last vision of the day, an hour after midnight, when the gibbous moon,—having forsaken the sea,—slowly surmounts the priory ruins on the high rock, appearing in the black-blue heaven like a quite different planet from that which I have been watching,—and from that which I shall next greet, a slender crescent in the light western sky, just after sunset. To go from this spectacle to one’s bed is to recover for the hour one’s health of soul, at least: and the remembrance of such a thrill is a cordial for future sickly hours which strengthens by keeping.

I have a sense of property too in the larkswhich nestle in all the furrows of the down. It is a disquietude to see them start up and soar, with premature joy, on some mild January day, before our snows and storms have begun, when I detect in myself a feeling of duty to the careless creatures,—a longing to warn them, by my superior wisdom, that they must not reckon yet on spring. And on April mornings, when the shadows are strong in the hollows, and some neighbour’s child sends me in a handful of primroses from the fields, I look forth, as for my due, to see the warblers spring and fall, and to catch their carol above the hum and rejoicing outcry of awakening Nature. If the yellow butterflies do not come to my flower-box in the sunny noon, I feel myself wronged. But they do come,—and so do the bees: and there are times when the service is too importunate,—when the life and light are more than I can bear, and I draw down the blind, and shut myself in with my weakness, and with thoughts more abstract. But when, in former days, had simple, natural influences such power over me? How is it that the long-suffering sick, already deprived of so much, are ever needlessly debarred from natural and renovating pleasures like these?

Watch the effect upon them of a picture, or a print of a breezy tree,—of a gushing stream,—of a group of children swinging on a gate in a lane. If they do not (because they cannot) express in words the thirst of their souls for these images, observe how their eyes wistfully follow the portfolio or volume of plates which ministers this scenery to them. Observe how, in looking at portraits, their notice fastens at once on any morsel of back-ground which presents any rural objects. Observe the sad fondness with which they cherish flowers,—how reluctantly it is admitted that they fade. Mark the value of presents of bulbs,—above the most splendid array of plants in flower, which kind people love to send to sick prisoners. Plants in bloom are beautiful and glorious; but the pleasure to a prisoner is to see the process of growth. It is less the bright and fragrant flower that the spirit longs for than the spectacle of vegetation.

Blessings on the inventors and improvers of fern-houses! We feel towards them a mingling of the gratitude due to physicians, and appropriate to the Good People. We find under their glass-bells fairy gifts, and prescriptions devised withconsummate skill. In towns, let the sick prisoner have a fern-house as a compensation for rural pleasures; and in the country as an addition to them.

Blessings on the writers of voyages and travels; and not the less for their not having contemplated our case in describing what they have seen! A school-boy’s or a soldier’s eagerness after voyages and travels is nothing to that of an invalid. We are insatiable in regard to this kind of book. To us it is scenery, exercise, fresh air. The new knowledge is quite a secondary consideration. We are weary of the aspect of a chest of drawers,—tired of certain marks on the wall, and of many unchangeable features of our apartment; so that when a morning comes, and our eyes open on these objects, and we foresee the seasons of pain or bodily distress, or mental depression, which we know must come round as regularly as the hours, we loathe the prospect of our day. Things clear up a little when we rise, and we think we ought to be writing a letter to such-a-one, which has been on our conscience for some time. While the paper and ink are being brought, we put out our hand for that book,—arrived or laid in sightthis morning. It is a Journal of Travels to the Polar Sea, or over the Passes of the Alps,—or in the Punjâb,—or in Central or South America. Here the leaves turn over rapidly;—there we linger, and read one paragraph again and again, dwelling fondly on some congregation of images, to be seen by our bodily eyes no more:—on we go till stopped by the fluttering and distress,—the familiar pain, or the leaden down-sinking of the spirits, and wonder that our trying time has come so soon, before the letter is written. It has not come soon;—it is only that some hours of our penance have been beguiled,—that we have been let out of our prison for a holiday, and are now brought back to our schooling. But the good does not end here. We see everything with different eyes,—the chest of drawers,—the walls,—the bookshelves, and the pattern of the rug. We have been seeing the Northern Lights and icebergs: we have been watching for avalanches, or for the sun-rise from Etna, or gazing over the Pampas, or peering through the primeval forest; and fragments of these visions freshen the very daylight to us.

Blessings, above all, on Christopher North! Wecannot but wonder whether he ever cast a thought upon such as we are when breasting the breeze on the moors, or pressing up the mountain-side, or watching beside the trout-stream; or summoning the fowls of heaven, and passing them in review into his Aviary;—or, especially, whether he had any thought of recreating us when he sent forth his “Recreations” within reach of our hands. If he did not think of sick prisoners in issuing his vital, breezy book, he has missed a pleasure worthy of a heart like his. He pities the town-dwellers who might relish nature and will not: but his pity for them must be destitute of the zest which pity derives from a consciousness of helpfulness. He can hardly help those to country privileges who will not help themselves. But has he remembered the chamber-dwellers,—the involuntary plodders within narrow bounds,—few in comparison with the other class, it is true, but, if estimated by emotion—by experience in which his heart can sympathise, not less entitled to his regards?

Whether he thought of us or not, he has recreated us. Whether he is now conscious of the fact or not, his spirit has come, many a time while his tired body slept, and opened our prison-doors,and led us a long flight over mountain and moor, lake and lea, and dropped us again on our beds, refreshed and soothed, to dream at least of having felt the long-lost sensation of health once more. Blessings on him then, as the kindest of the friendly ghosts who use well their privilege of passing in and out of all secret and sorrowful places, as they go to and fro on the earth! If he has ministered to us with more or less deliberate intent, he needs not to be told with what heartiness we drink his health in the first full draught of the spring west wind—how cordially we pledge him in the sparkling thunder-shower, or the brimming harvest-moon.

O! if every one who sorrows for us would help us to assert our claim to Nature’s nursing, we should soon have our solace and our due. We have not all the vigour and spirit,—nor even the inclination, in our morbid state, to turn our faces to the fountain of solace—the fresh waters which cool the spirit when fretted by its tormenting companion. We cannot infallibly keep alive in our weak selves the love of Nature which would lead us to repose ourselves upon her, and forget the evils which even she cannot cure. But this shouldbe done for us. When our sentence is passed, clear and irreversible, the next thing is to make it as lenient as possible in its operation; and especially by seeing that it is through no oversight that, if the outward man must decay, the inward man is not renewed day by day. This renewal, say some, must be by grace. Well, Nature is God’s grace, meant to abound to all,—and not least to those whom, by his chastening, he may be humbly supposed to love.

“There is a pause near death when men grow boldToward all things else.”Robert Landor.

“Man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders: he will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. He will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base and frivolous in his own life, and be content with all places, and any service he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart.”Emerson.

Emerson.

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Canwe not all remember the time when, on first taking to heart Milton, and afterwards Akenside,—(before knowing anything of Dante,) we conceived the grandest moment of possible existence to be that of a Seraph, poised on balanced wings, watching the bringing out of a world from chaos, its completion in fitness, beauty and radiance, and its first motion in its orbit, when sent forth by the creative hand on its everlasting way? How many a young imagination has dwelt on this image till the act appeared to be almost one of memory,—till the vision became one of the persuasives to entertain the notion of human pre-existence, in which we find one or another about us apt to delight! To me, this conception was, in my childhood, one of eminent delight; and when, years afterwards, I was involved in more than the ordinary toil and hurry of existence, I now and then recurred to the old image, with a sort of longing to exchange my function,—my share of the world-building in which we all have to help, for the privilege of the supposed seraph. Was there nothing prophetic, or at least provident, in this? Is not sequestration from the action of life a different thing to me from what it would have been if there had been no preparation of the imagination? Though I, and my fellows in lot, must wait long for the seraphic powers which would enable us fully to enjoy and use our position, we have the position; and it is for us to see how far we can make our privilege correspond to the anticipation.

Nothing is more impossible to represent in words, even to one’s self in meditative moments, than what it is to lie on the verge of life and watch, with nothing to do but to think, and learn from what we behold. Let any one recall what it is to feel suddenly, by personal experience, thefull depth of meaning of some saying, always believed in, often repeated with sincerity, but never till nowknown. Every one has felt this, in regard to some one proverb, or divine scriptural clause, or word of some right royal philosopher or poet. Let any one then try to conceive of an extension of this realisation through all that has ever been wisely said of man and human life, and he will be endeavouring to imagine our experience. Engrossing, thrilling, overpowering as the experience is, we have each to bear it alone; for each of us is surrounded by the active and the busy, who have a different gift and a different office;—and if not, it is one of those experiences which are incommunicable. If we endeavour to utter our thoughts on the folly of the pursuit of wealth, on the emptiness of ambition, on the surface nature of distinctions of rank, &c. we are only saying what our hearers have had by heart all their lives from books,—through a long range of authors, from Solomon to Burns. Spoken moralities really reach only those whom they immediately concern;—and they are such as are saying the same things within their own hearts. We utter them under two conditions:—sometimesbecause we cannot help it; and sometimes under a sense of certainty that a human heart somewhere is needing the sympathy for which we yearn.

You, my fellow-sufferer, now lying on your couch, the newspaper dropping from your hand, while your eyes are fixed on the lamp, are you not smiling at the thought that you have preserved, up to this time, more or less of that faith of your childhood—that everything that is in print is true? Before we had our present leisure for reflection, we read one newspaper,—perhaps occasionally one on the other side. We found opposition of views; but this was to be expected from diversities of minds and position. Now the whole press is open to us, and we see what is said on all sides. What an astonishing result! We hear that Cabinet Ministers are apt to grow nervous about newspaper commentaries on their conduct. To us this seems scarcely possible, seeing, as we do, that, though every paper may be useful reading for the suggestions and other lights it affords, every one is at fault, as a judge. Every one forgets, actually or politicly, that it is in possession of only partial information, generally speaking; we find no guarding intimation to the reader, that there may beinformation behind which might alter the aspect of the question. Such notice may be too much to expect of diurnal literature; but the confusion made by the positiveness of all parties, proceeding on their respective faulty grounds of fact—a positiveness usually proportioned to the faultiness of the grounds—is such as might, one would think, relieve Cabinet Ministers who have their work at heart, from any very anxious solicitude about the judgments of the press, in regard to unfinished affairs. Meantime, what a work is done! Amidst the flat contradictions of fact, and oppositions of opinion,—amidst the passion which sets men’s wits to work to conceive of and propose all imaginable motives and results, what an abundance of light is struck out! From a crowd of falsehoods, what a revelation we have of the truth, which no one man, nor party of men, could reveal!—of the wants, wishes, and ideas of every class or coterie of society that can speak for itself, and of some that cannot!

Observe the process to which all this conduces. Before we were laid aside, we read, as everybody read, philosophical histories, in which the progress of society was presented; we read of the old times,when the chieftain, whatever his title, dwelt in the castle on the steep, while his retainers were housed in a cluster of dwellings under the shadow of his protection. We read of the indispensable function of the Priest, in the castle, and of the rise of his order; and then of the Lawyer andhisorder. We read of the origin of Commerce, beginning in monopoly; and then of the gradual admission of more and more parties to the privileges of trade, and their settling themselves in situations favourable for the purpose, and apart from the head monopolists. We read of the indispensable function of the Merchant, and the rise ofhisorder. We read of the feuds and wars of the aristocratic orders, which, while fatally weakening them, left leisure for the middle and lower classes to rise and grow, and strengthen themselves, till the forces of society were shifted, and its destinies presented a new aspect. We read of the sure, though sometimes intermitting, advance of popular interests, and reduction of aristocratic power and privileges, throughout the general field of civilisation. We read of all these things, and assented to what seemed so very clear—so distinct an interpretation of what had happened up to our own day. At thesame time, busy and involved as we were in the interests of the day, how little use did we make of the philosophic retrospect, which might and should have been prophetic! You, I think, dreaded in every popular movement a whirlwind of destruction—in every popular success a sentence of the dissolution of society. You believed that such a man, or such a set of men, could give stability to our condition, and fix us, for an unassignable time, at the point of the last settlement, or what you assumed to be the latest. I, meanwhile, believed that our safety or peril, for a term, depended on the event of this or that movement, the carrying of this or that question. I was not guilty of fearing political ruin. I did with constancy believe in the certain advance of popular interests, and demolition of all injurious power held by the few; but I believed that more depended on single questions than was really involved in such, and that separate measures would be more comprehensive and complete than a dispassionate observer thinks possible. In the midst of all this, you and I were taken apart; and have not our eyes been opened to perceive, in the action of society, the continuation of the history we read so long ago? I needscarcely allude to the progress of popular interests, and the unequalled rapidity with which some great questions are approaching to a settlement. We have a stronger tendency to speculate on the movements of the minds engaged in the transaction of affairs, than on the rate of advance of the affairs themselves. With much that is mortifying and sad, and something that is amusing, how much is there instructive! And how clear, as in a bird’s-eye view of a battle, or as in the analysis of a wise speculative philosopher, is the process!

We see everybody that is busy doing what we did—overrating the immediate object. There is no sin in this, and no harm, however it proves incessantly the fallibility of human judgments. It is ordered by Him who constituted our minds and our duties, that our business of the hour should be magnified by the operation of our powers upon it. Without this, nothing would ever be done; for every man’s energy is no more than sufficient for his task; and there would be a fatal abatement of energy, if a man saw his present employment in the proportion in which it must afterwards appear to other affairs,—the limitation and weakness of our powers causing us to apprehend feebly thedetails of what we see, when we endeavour to be comprehensive in our views. The truth seems to lie in a point of view different from either. I doubt whether it is possible for us to overrate the positive importance of what we are doing, though we are continually exaggerating its value in relation to other objects of our own, while it seems pretty certain that we entertain an inadequate estimate of interests that we have dismissed, to make room for new ones.

Next, we see the present operation of old liberalising causes so strong as to be irresistible; men of all parties—or, at least, reasonable men of all parties—so carried along by the current of events, that it is scarcely now a question with any one what is the point towards which the vessel of the State is to be carried next, but how she is to be most safely steered amidst the perils which beset an ordained course. One party mourns that no great political hero rises up to retard the speed to a rate of safety; and another party mourns that no great political hero presents himself to increase while guiding our speed by the inspiration of his genius; while there are a few tranquil observers who believe that, glorious as would be the adventof a great political hero at any time, we could never better get on without one, because never before were principles so clearly and strongly compelling their own adoption, and working out their own results. They are now the masters, and not the servants, of Statesmen; and inestimable as would be the boon of a great individual will, which should work in absolute congeniality with these powers, we may trust, for our safety and progress, in their dominion over all lesser wills.

Next, we perceive, (and we ask whether some others can be as blind to it as they appear to be,) that a great change has taken place in the morals—at least, in the conventional morals, of Statesmanship. Consistency was once, and not long ago, a primary virtue in a Statesman,—consistency, not only in general principle and aims, through a whole public life, but in views of particular questions. Now it has become far otherwise. The incurable bigots of political society are the only living politicians, except a very small number of so-called ultra-liberals, who can boast of unchanged views. Perhaps every public man of sense and honour has changed his opinions, on more or fewer questions, since he entered public life. It cannot beotherwise in a period of transition, in a monarchy where the popular element is rising, and the rulers are selected from the privileged classes alone. The virtue of such functionaries now is, not that their opinions remain stationary, and that their views remain consistent through a whole life, but that they can live and learn.

And there are two ways of doing this—two kinds of men who do it. One kind of man has all his life believed that certain popular principles are for the good of society; he now learns to extend this faith to measures which he once thought ultra and dangerous, and embraces these measures with an earnest heart, for their own value. Another sort of man has predilections opposed to these measures, laments their occurrence, and wishes the old state of affairs could have been preserved; but he sees that it is impossible,—he sees the strength of the national will, and the tendency of events so united with these measures, that there is peril in resistance. He thinks it a duty to make a timely proposal and grant of them, rather than endanger the general allegiance and tranquillity by delay, refusal, or conflict.

Now, though we may have our preferences inregard to such public men, we cannot impute guilt to either kind. We see that it is unjust to impute moral or political sin in either case. The great point of interest to you and me is to observe how such new necessities and methods work in society.

The incurables of the privileged classes of course act after their kind. They are full of astonishment and feeble rage. The very small number of really philosophical liberals—once ultras, but now nearly overtaken by the times—- see tranquilly the fulfilment of their anticipations, and anticipate still—how wisely, time will show. Of the two intermediate parties, the question is, which appears most able to live and learn? From the start the liberals had originally, it would seem that they must hold the more dignified position of the two. But, judging them out of their own mouths, what can we think and say?

To us it appears a noble thing to apprehend truth early, not merely as a guess, but as a ground of opinion and action. A man who is capable of this is secure that his opinions will be embraced by more and more minds, till they become the universal belief of men. It is natural to him to feel satisfaction as the fellowship spreads—both because fellowship is pleasant to himself, andbecause the hour thereby draws nearer and nearer for society to be fully blessed with the truth which was early apparent to him. When this truth becomes indisputable and generally diffused, and its related action takes place, his satisfaction should be complete.

What an exception to this natural process, this healthy enjoyment, do we witness in the political transactions of the time! Whatever may be thought of the consistency of the most rapidly progressive party, what can be said of the philosophy of the more early liberal? At every advance of their former opponents, they are exasperated. They fight for every tardily-apprehended political truth as for a private property. They not only complain—“You thought the contrary in such a year!” “Here are the words you spoke in such a year; the reverse of what you say now!” but they cry, on every declaration of conversion to one of their long-avowed opinions, “Hands off! that ismytruth; I got it so many years ago, and you shan’t touch it!” To you and me (to whom it is much the same thing to look back and to look abroad), it irresistibly occurs to ask whether it was thus in former transition-states of society; whether,for instance, assured and long-avowed Christians exclaimed, on occasion of the conversion of enlightened heathens—“You extolled Jupiter in such a year, and now you disparage him.” “Remember what you said of Diana no longer ago than such a year!” “Do you think we shall admit you to our Christ? He is ours these ten years!” Those of us who believe and feel that the development of moral science (of which political is one department) is as progressive as that of physical, cannot but glance at the aspect of such conduct in relation to the discovery of a new chemical agency, or important heavenly body; and then.... But enough of such illustration. Nobody doubts the absurdity, when fairly set down; though the number of grown men who have, within three years, committed it daily in newspapers, clubs, markets, and the Houses of Parliament, is so great as to be astonishing, till we discern the causes, proximate and final, of such unphilosophical discourse and demeanour.

While in this conflict grave and responsible leaders grow factious—while men of purpose forget their march onward in side-skirmishes—while reformers lose sight of the imperishable quality oftheir cause, and talk of hopeless corruption and inevitable destruction—how do affairs appear to us, in virtue merely of our being out of the strife?

We see that large principles are more extensively agreed upon than ever before—more manifest to all eyes, from the very absence of a hero to work them, since they are every hour showing how irresistibly they are making their own way. We see that the tale of the multitude is told as it never was told before—their health, their minds and morals, pleaded for in a tone perfectly new in the world. We see that the dreadful sins and woes of society are the results of old causes, and that our generation has the honour of being responsible for their relief, while the disgrace of their existence belongs, certainly not to our time, and perhaps to none. We see that no spot of earth ever before contained such an amount of infallible resources as our own country at this day; so much knowledge, so much sense, so much vigour, foresight, and benevolence, or such an amount of external means. We see the progress of amelioration, silent but sure, as the shepherd on the upland sees in the valley the advance of a gush of sunshine from between two hills. He observes what the peoplebelow are too busy to mark: how the light attains now this object and now that—how it now embellishes yonder copse, and now gilds that stream, and now glances upon the roofs of the far-off hamlet—the signs and sounds of life quickening along its course. When we remember that this is the same sun that guided the first vessels of commerce over the sea—the same by whose light Magna Charta was signed in Runnymede—that shone in the eyes of Cromwell after Naseby fight—that rose on 800,000 free blacks in the West Indies on a certain August morning—and is now shining down into the dreariest recesses of the coal-mine, the prison, and the cellar—how can we doubt that darkness is to be chased away, and God’s sunshine to vivify, at last, the whole of our world?

Is it necessary, some may ask, to be sick, and apart, to see and believe these things? Events seem to show that for some—for many—sequestration from affairs is necessary to this end; for there are not a few who, in the hubbub of party, have let go their faith, and have not to this moment found it again. If there are some in the throng who can at once act and anticipate faithfully, we may thank God for the blessing. But they are sadly few.

I have said how clearly appears to us the fact and the reason of every man’s exaggerating at the moment the importance of the work under his hand. Not less clear is the ordination, as old and as continuous as human action, by which men fail, more or less, of obtaining their express objects, while all manner of unexpected good arises in a collateral way. It is usual to speak of the results of the labours of alchemists in this view, everybody seeing that while we still pick out our gold from the ground, we owe much to the alchemists that they never thought of. But the same is true of almost every object of human pursuit, and even of belief. No doubt we invalids keep up our likeness to our kind, in this respect, as far as we are able to act at all; but we have more time than others to contemplate the working of the plan on a large scale. Look at the projects, the discoveries, the quackeries of the day!

With regard to the projects, however, I am at present disposed to make one partial exception—to acknowledge, as far as I can at present see, one case of singularity. I mean with regard to the New Postage. The general rule proves true in one half of it, that many great and yet unascertainedbenefits are arising, of which the projector did not dream; so that a volume might be filled with anecdotes, curious to the spectator and delightful to the benevolent. But, thus far, it does not appear that any fallacy has mixed itself with the express expectations of the projector. I do not speak of the failure of his efforts to get his whole plan adopted. That will soon be a matter of small account—a disappointment and vexation gone by—a temporary trial of patience, forgotten except by the record. I mean that he has advanced no propositions which he does not seem perfectly able to prove, uttered no promises which do not appear certain to be fulfilled. This project is perhaps the noblest afloat in our country and time, considering the moral interests it involves. It is, perhaps, scarcely possible to exaggerate the force and extent of its civilising and humanising influences, especially in regard to its spreading the spirit of Home over all the occupations and interests of life, in defiance of the separating powers of distance and poverty; and it will be curious if this enterprise, besides keeping the school-child at his mother’s bosom, the apprentice, the governess, and the maid-servant, at their father’s hearth—and ussick or aged people entertained daily with the flowers, music, books, sentiment and news of the world we have left—should prove an exception to all others in performing all its express promises. At present, I own, this appears no matter of doubt.

As for the discoveries or quackeries of the time, (and who will undertake to say in what instances they are not, sooner or later, compounded?) how clear is the collateral good, whatever may be the express failure? Those who receive all the sayings of the Coryphæus of the phrenologists, and those who laugh at his maps of the mind and his so-called ethics, must both admit that much knowledge of the structure of the brain, much wise care of human health and faculties, has issued from the pursuit, for the benefit of man. This Mesmerism again: who believes that it could be revived, again and again, at intervals of centuries, if there were not something in it? Who looks back upon the mass of strange but authenticated historical narratives, which might be explained by this agent, and looks, at the same time, into our dense ignorance of the structure and functions of the nervous system, and will dare to say that there is nothing in it? Whateverquackery and imposture may be connected with it, however its pretensions may be falsified, it seems impossible but that some new insight must be obtained by its means, into the powers of our mysterious frame—some fixing down under actual cognizance, of flying and floating notions, full of awe, which have exercised the belief and courage of many wise, for many centuries.

After smiling over old books all our lives, on meeting with quaint assumptions of the Humoral pathology as true, while we supposed it exploded—behold it arising again! One cannot open a newspaper, scarcely a letter, without seeing something about the Water-cure; and grave doctors, who will listen to nothing the laity can say of anything new, (any more than they would tolerate the mention of the circulation of the blood in Harvey’s day,) now intimate that the profession are disposed to believe that there is more in the humoral pathology than was thought thirty years ago, though not so much as the water-curers presume. Is it not pretty certain, then, that something will come of this rage for the water-cure, (something more than ablution, temperance, and exercise,) though its professors must be embalmed as quacks in the literature of the time? Is there not still another operation of the same principle involved in the case? Are we not growing sensibly more merciful, more wisely humane towards empirics themselves, when they cease to be our oracles? Are we not learning, from their jumbled discoveries and failures, that empiricism itself is a social function, indispensable, made so by God, however ready we may be to bestow our cheap laughter upon it? To us retired observers of life there is too much of this easy mockery for our taste, or for the morals of society. Ours seems to be an age when it is to the credit of others, besides statesmen, that they can live and learn; and there is no getting on in our learning without empiricism. It is less wise than easy to ridicule its connection with non-essential modes and appearances prescribed or suggested by the passions, needs, or follies of the time. It is most wise, and should be easy, to have faith that the determining conditions of all experimental discovery will be ascertained in due season. If, meanwhile, we can obtain from the magnetisers any light as to any function of the nervous system, we may excuse them from the performance ofsome promised feats. If the Homœopathists can help us to any new principle of natural antagonism to disease, they may well abide the laugh which I am not aware that the serious of their number have ever provoked by any extreme and unsupported pretensions.

But at this rate, occupying this scope, I shall never have done. I might write on for every day of my life, and be no nearer the end of our speculations. Let what I have said go for specimens of our observation of life in two or three particulars. When I think of what I have seen with my own eyes from one back window, in the few years of my illness; of how indescribably clear to me are many truths of life from my observation of the doings of the tenants of a single row of houses; it seems to me scarcely necessary to see more than the smallest sample, in order to analyse life in its entireness. I could fill a volume—and an interesting one too—with a simple detail of what I have witnessed, as I said, from one back-window. But I must tell, nothing. These two or three little courts and gardens ought to be as sacred as any interior. Nothing of the spy shall mix itself withmy relation to neighbours who have ever been kind to me. Suffice it, that if I saw no further into the world with the mental than with the bodily eye, I should be kept in a state of perpetual wonder, (of pleasing wonder, on the whole,) at the operation of the human heart and mind, in its most ordinary circumstances. Nothing can be more ordinary than the modes of life which I overlook, yet am I kept wide awake in my watch by ever new instances of the fulness of pleasure derivable from the scantiest sources; of the vividness of emotion excitable by the most trifling incidents; of the wonderful power pride has of pampering itself upon the most meagre food; and, above all, of the infinite ingenuity of human love. Nothing, perhaps, has impressed me so deeply as the clear view I have of almost all, if not quite the whole, of the suffering I have witnessed being the consequence of vice or ignorance. But when my heart has sickened at the sight, and at the thought of so much gratuitous pain, it has grown strong again in the reflection that, if unnecessary, this misery is temporary,—that the true ground of mourning would be if the pain were not from causes which are remediable. Then I cannot but look forwardto the time when the bad training of children,—the petulancies of neighbours—the errors of the ménage—the irksome superstitions, and the seductions of intemperance, shall all have been annihilated by the spread of intelligence, while the mirth at the minutest jokes—the proud plucking of nosegays—the little neighbourly gifts, (less amusing hereafter, perhaps, in their taste)—the festal observances—the disinterested and refined acts of self-sacrifice and love, will remain as long as the human heart has mirth in it, or a humane complacency and self-respect,—as long as its essence is what it has ever been, “but a little lower than the angels.”

How is it possible to give an idea of what the gradual disclosure of the fates of individuals is to us? In reading chronicles, and the lighter kinds of history, we have all found ourselves eagerly watching the course of love and domestic life, and pausing over the winding up, at death, of the lot of personages whose mere names were all the interest we began with. To us, in the monotony of our lives, it seems as if other people’s lives slipped away with the rapidity with which weread a book, while the interest we feel is that of personal knowledge. It is as if Time himself were present unseen, whispering to us of a new kindled love,—of marriage, with all its details of “pomp and circumstance;” and then comes the deeper social interest,—the opening of a glimpse into the vista of new generations, while all around the other interests of life are transacting, and the children we knew at their parents’ knees are abroad in the world, acting for themselves, and putting a hand to the destinies of society.

Of all the announcements made in the silence of our solitude, none are so striking as those of deaths, familiar as the thought of death is to us, and natural as our own death would appear to ourselves, and to everybody. To present witnesses, and in the midst of the activity of life, the spectacle of death loses half its force. It is we who feel the awful beauty of it, when the great Recorder intimates to us that they who were strenuous in mutual conflict have lain down side by side; that to old age its infirmities matter no longer, as the body itself is surrendered; that the weary spirit of care is at rest, and that the most active affections and occupations of life have beenbrought to a sudden close. Many young and busy persons wish, as I used to wish, that Time would be prophet as well as watchman. On New Year’s Eves, such long to divine how many, and who of those they know, will be smitten and withdrawn during the coming year. We, in our solitude, do not desire to forestal the unrolling of the scroll. To ponder the register of the year’s deaths at its close, is enough for us, to whom our seclusion serves for all purposes of speculation. While we are waiting, every year conveys away before us the infant, (a new immortality created before our eyes); the busy citizen, or indispensable mother, (showing how much more important in the eye of God is it what we are than what we do;) the young maiden, full of sympathy, (perhaps for us,) and of hope; and the aged, full of years, but perhaps not less of life. Such is the register of every year at its close.

To us, whose whole life is sequestered,—who see nothing of the events of which we hear so much, or see them only as gleam or shadow passing along our prison-walls, there is something indescribably affecting in the act of regarding History, Life, and Speculation as one. All areenhanced to us by their melting into each other. History becomes like actual life; life becomes comprehensive as history, and abstract as speculation. Not only does human life, from the cradle to the grave, lie open to us, but the whole succession of generations, without the boundary line of the past being interposed; and with the very clouds of the future so thinned,—rendered so penetrable, as that we believe we discern the salient and bright points of the human destiny yet to be revealed.

It would be impossible to set down, within any moderate limits, notices of changes in the Modes of life,—modes arising from progressive civilisation, and deeply affecting morals;—but there is one branch of one great change, which I will mention, as it bears a relation to the morals of the sick-room.

We all know how the present action of our new civilisation works to the impairing of Privacy. As new discoveries are causing all-penetrating physical lights so to abound as that, as has been said, we shall soon not know where in the world to get any darkness, so our new facilities for every sortof communication work to reduce privacy much within its former limits. There are some limits, however, which ought to be preserved with vigilance and care, as indispensable, not only to comfort, but to some of the finest virtues and graces of mind and life.

It is to be hoped that the privacy ofvivâ voceconversation will ever remain sacred: but it is known that that which ought to be as holy, that of epistolary correspondence,—(the private conversation of distant friends,) is constantly and deliberately violated, where there are certain inducements to do so. The press works so diligently and beneficially for society at large, that there is a tendency to commit everything to it, on utilitarian considerations of a rather coarse kind: and the moment it can be made out that the publication of anything will and may do some ostensible good, the thing is published,—whatever considerations of a different or a higher sort may lie behind. If the people of note in society were inquired of, they would say that the privilege—the right—of privacy of epistolary correspondence now exists only for the obscure;—and for them, only till some person meets them whose zeal for the publicgood leads him to lay hold on all material by which anybody may be supposed likely to learn anything. As for people of note,—their letters are naturally preserved by the recipients: when the writer dies, these recipients are plied with entreaties and remonstrances,—placed in a position of cruel difficulty (as it is to many) between their delicacy of affection for the deceased, and the pain of being made responsible for intercepting his fame, and depriving society of the benefit of the disclosure of his living mind.

Under this state of things, what happens? Some destroy, through life, all the letters they receive, but those on business. Some, with an agonising heart, burn them after the writer’s death, to escape the requisitions of executors. Many, alas! resign their privilege of freedom of epistolary speech, and write no letters which any one would care to preserve for an hour. Some call in their own letters;—a painful process, both to writer and receivers. Of such as do not care what becomes of their letters, there is no need to say anything. Their feelings require no consideration, for their letters cannot be of a private,—nor, therefore, of the most valuable kind. Themisery of the liability is in regard to letters of affection and confidence,—letters which the writer could no more bear to see again than to have notes taken of the out-pourings of his heart in an hour of confidence. It is too certain that many such letters are now never written which crave to be so: and it is much to be feared that some letters, purporting to be private, are written with a view to ultimate publication; and thus the receiver is insulted, or there is a sacrifice of honesty all round.

I do not see any probability of a dearth of biographies. I believe that there will always be interest enough in human life and character to secure a sufficiency of records of individuals:—that there will always be enough of persons whose letters are not of a very private kind,—always enough of provided and exceptional cases to serve society with a sufficiency of biography, of a duly analytical kind. But if I did not believe this,—if I believed that the choice lay between a sacrifice of the completest order of biography and that of the inviolability of private epistolary correspondence, I could not hesitate for a moment. I would keep the old and precious privacy,—the inestimable right of every one who has a friend and can write to him;—I would keep our written confidence from being made biographical material, as anxiously as I would keep our spoken conversation from being noted down for the good of society. I would keep the power of free speech under all the influences of life and fate,—and leave Biography to exist or perish.

And pretty sure it is of existence. It has, for its material, the life and actions of all men and women of note;—their printed and otherwise public writings and sayings;—the recollections of those who knew them; and, in no small number of cases, material which, however we may wonder at, we have only to take and be thankful for. A Doddridge keeps a copy of every letter or note he ever wrote, labelled and put by for posthumous use. A D’Arblay spends her last hours in elaborating her revelations of the transactions, private and public, of her day; and revises, for publication, the expressions of fondness and impulse, written to sisters and other intimates, long dead. A Rousseau here and there gives more. One way and another, the resources of biography are secure enough, without encroachment on a sacredprocess of intercourse. Biography will never fail. Would that we were all equally secure of a higher matter,—our right of freedom of epistolary speech!

“But when all are dead,—and nobody concerned remains to be hurt?” remonstrates one. The reply is, that as long as people of note, who love their friends, remain, there are some left to be concerned and injured.

“But,” says another, “would you object to do good, after your death, by your letters being published?” The reply is that, in the supposition, I see an enormous sacrifice of a higher and greater good to a lower and smaller. No letters, in any number and of any quality,—if they exhibited all the wisdom of Solomon, and all the graces of the Queen of Sheba, could do so much good as a single clear and strong protest against the preservation of strictly private letters for biographical material.

“But,” says another, “had you not better leave the matter to the discretion of survivors? Surely you can trust your executors;—surely you can trust the friends who will survive you.” The reply is—when this critical state of our morals ispast, no doubt executors may be trusted about letters, as about other matters. But the very point of the case is that its morality is not yet ascertained by those who do not suffer under the liability, and have not fellow-feeling with those who do. My executors may very sincerely think it their duty to publish my most private letters,—and even to be now laying them by in order for the purpose: while I feel that, once aroused to a view of the liability, I could more innocently leave to the discretion of survivors the disposition of lands and money than that of my private utterances to my friends. In a case of differing or opposing views of duty,—if my own is clear and stringent, I cannot innocently leave the matter to the chance of other persons’ convictions. There cannot be a more strictly personal duty, and I must do it myself.

I have, therefore, done it. Having made the discovery of the preservation of my letters for purposes of publication hereafter, I have ascertained my own legal rights, and acted upon them. I have adopted legal precautions against the publication of my private letters;—I have made it a condition of my confidential correspondence thatmy letters shall not be preserved: and I have been indulged by my friends, generally, with an acquiescence in my request that my entire correspondence, except such as relates to business, shall be destroyed. Of course, I do as I would be done by. The privacy I claim for myself, I carefully guard for others. I keep no letters of a private and passing nature. I know that others are thinking and acting with me. We enjoy, by this provision, a freedom and fulness of epistolary correspondence which could not possibly exist if the press loomed in the distance, or executors’ eyes were known to be in wait hereafter. Our correspondence has all the flow and lightness of the most secret talk. This is a present reward, and a rich one, for the effort and labour of making our views and intentions understood. But it is not our only reward. We perceive that we have fixed attention upon what is becoming an important point of Morals: and we feel, in our inmost hearts, that we have done what we could to guard from encroachment an important right, and from destruction a precious privilege. This may appear a strange statement to persons whose privacy is safe in their obscurity. Those who know intheir own experience the liabilities of fame, will understand, and deeply feel, what I have said.

I have mentioned above, that, to us in seclusion, History, Life, and Speculation, assume a continuity such as would not have been believed possible by ourselves in former days, when they appeared to constitute departments of study as separate as moral studies can be. It would be curious and interesting to an observer of the human mind, to pass from retreat to retreat, and watch the progress of this fusion of objects; to see the formerly busy member of society—“the practical man,”—growing speculative in his turn of thought; the speculative writer nourishing more and more of an antiquarian taste; and the antiquary finding seclusion serve as well as the passage of ages, and viewing the modes and instruments of the life of to-day with the eye and the gusto of the antiquary of ten centuries hence.

And not only in their studies would men of such differing tastes be found to be brought together under the influences of sequestration from the world. There are matters of moral perception and taste in which they would draw near no less remarkably. The one conspicuous, undyinghumanity, which is the soul of all the forms of life that they contemplate, must be, to all, the sun of their intellectual day, beneath whose penetrating light all adventitious distinctions melt into insignificance. Distinctions of rank, for instance, become attenuated to a previously inconceivable degree. To the antiquary, as well as to the most radical speculator, there would be little more in the sovereign entering the sick-room than any other stranger whom kindness might bring. It requires that we should live in the midst of the arrangements of society, that our conventional ideas should be nourished by daily associations, in order to keep up even the remembrance of differences of hereditary rank, so overpowering in our view are the great interests of life which are common to all,—Duty, Thought, Love, Joy, Sorrow, and Death.

If the sovereign were to enter our rooms, there would be strong interests and affections connected with her, but interests relating to her responsibilities and her destinies, and scarcely at all to her rank—to the singularity, and not the exaltation, of her position. It is a strong doubt to me, whether one of high degree, placed in our circumstances, could long retain aristocratic ideas and tendencies; whether to the proudest noble, shut up in his chamber for five years, the cottage child he sees from his window, the footboy who brings his fuel, must not necessarily become as imposing to his imagination and his heart as the young princes of the blood.

Something of the same process takes place, even with regard to the distinctions of intellectual nobility. As for the nothingness of literary fame, amidst the stress of personal trial (except in the collateral benefits it brings), an hour in the sick-room might convince the most superstitious worshipper of celebrity. As for the rest; in the presence of the general ignorance, on the brink of that black abyss, our best lights are really so ineffectual, that it is impossible to pride ourselves on our intellectual differences, ranging merely as from the torch to the farthing candle.

In truth, in our retreat, moral considerations are all in all. Moral distinctions are the chief; and moral interests, common to all, are supreme. They are so from their essential nature; and they are so to us especially, from the singular advantage of our position for seeing their beauty, and theabundance of it. We could make known—what is little suspected by busy stirrers in the world, and wholly disbelieved by despondent moralists who dwell amidst its apparent confusion—that there is a deep heaven lying inclosed in the very centre of society, and a genuine divinity residing in the heart of every member of it, which might, if we would but recognise it, check, our longing to leave the present scene, to search for God and Heaven elsewhere. All, that is most frivolous and insignificant is ever most noisy and obtrusive; all that is most wicked is most boastful and audacious; all that is worst in men, and society, has a tendency to come uppermost; and thus the most superficial observers of life are the most despondent. Meantime, whatever is holy, pure, and peaceable, works silently and unremittingly; and while turbulent passions are exhausting themselves before the eyes of men, a calm and perpetual renovation is spreading outwards from the central heart, of humanity. I have the image before my eyes at this moment—the awful type of the blessed reality—in the tossing sea, which the neighbours dare hardly look upon. It rages and rolls, it dashes, the drift-wood on the shore, and heavysqualls come driving over it, like messengers of dismay. At this very instant, how calm are its depths! There light dwells, as long as there is light in heaven; and there is no end to the treasures of beauty on which it shines. If it be a fable that there are happy beings dwelling there, basking and singing, unconscious of the tempests overhead, it is certainly true that it is thus in the upper world, of which the ocean is a type. It is true, as a friend said to me, that “the dark is full of beautiful things.” Without an image, speaking in the plainest and most absolute terms, the least known parts of human life are full of moral beauty. I am fully persuaded, that, if we wish to extend and confirm our ideas of Heaven, we should not wander back and afar to the old Eden, or forward and upward to some bright star of the firmament, but we should look into the retired places of our own actual world, of our own country, of our own town and village. We should look into the faces to be met in the street every day; we should look round by the light of our common sun. However, my immediate business is to say that we, who are not abroad in the streets, and cannot go in bodily presence into the by-places of life, have more ofthis heaven disclosed to us than others, because we appear to need it more. If any one of us could and might tell what we know of the good of human hearts, the heavenly deeds of human hands, the desponding would hang their heads no longer with fear, but with shame for their fear. If I alone might make a record of the heavenly aspects which have been presented in this one room, such a record would extinguish all revilings of man and of life. And when I think that what has appeared to me must, in natural course, have appeared to all my companions in infirmity, when I gather into one all these revelations of the real moral life of society, I perceive that, till death satisfies us in regard to a local heaven, we may well be satisfied with that which lies all round about us—not mute, while tender and pitying voices speak to us; nor wholly unseen, while tearful or kindling eyes meet our own.

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