wide
open, through which the sun of midsummer at noonday was showering down
torrents of splendour. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the
blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and it was not possible
for eye to behold or for heart to conceive any symbols more pathetic of
life and the glory of life.

Let me pause for one instant in approaching a remembrance so affecting and
revolutionary for my own mind, and one which (if any earthly remembrance)
will survive for me in the hour of death,--to remind some readers, and to
inform others, that in the original _Opium Confessions_ I endeavoured to
explain the reason[7] why death, _caeteris paribus_, is more profoundly
affecting in summer than in other parts of the year; so far at least as it
is liable to any modification at all from accidents of scenery or season.
The reason, as I there suggested, lies in the antagonism between the
tropical redundancy of life in summer and the dark sterilities of the
grave. The summer we see, the grave we haunt with our thoughts; the glory
is around us, the darkness is within us. And, the two coming into
collision, each exalts the other into stronger relief. But in my case
there was even a subtler reason why the summer had this intense power of
vivifying the spectacle or the thoughts of death. And, recollecting it,
often I have been struck with the important truth--that far more of our
deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of
_concrete_ objects, pass to us as _involutes_ (if I may coin that word) in
compound experiences incapable of being disentangled, than ever reach us
_directly_, and in their own abstract shapes. It had happened that amongst
our nursery collection of books was the Bible illustrated with many
pictures. And in long dark evenings, as my three sisters with myself sate
by the firelight round the _guard_ of our nursery, no book was so much in
request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music.
One young nurse, whom we all loved, before any candle was lighted, would
often strain her eyes to read it for us; and sometimes, according to her
simple powers, would endeavour to explain what we found obscure. We, the
children, were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness; the fitful
gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by fire-light, suited our evening
state of feelings; and they suited also the divine revelations of power
and mysterious beauty which awed u