as now locked--the key
was taken away--and I was shut out for ever.

Then came the funeral. I, as a point of decorum, was carried thither. I
was put into a carriage with some gentlemen whom I did not know. They
were kind to me; but naturally they talked of things disconnected with the
occasion, and their conversation was a torment. At the church, I was told
to hold a white handkerchief to my eyes. Empty hypocrisy! What need had
_he_ of masques or mockeries, whose heart died within him at every word
that was uttered? During that part of the service which passed within the
church, I made an effort to attend, but I sank back continually into my
own solitary darkness, and I heard little consciously, except some
fugitive strains from the sublime chapter of St Paul, which in England is
always read at burials. And here I notice a profound error of our present
illustrious Laureate. When I heard those dreadful words--for dreadful they
were to me--"It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is
sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory;" such was the recoil of my
feelings, that I could even have shrieked out a protesting--"Oh, no, no!"
if I had not been restrained by the publicity of the occasion. In after
years, reflecting upon this revolt of my feelings, which, being the voice
of nature in a child, must be as true as any mere _opinion_ of a child
might probably be false, I saw at once the unsoundness of a passage in
_The Excursion_. The book is not here, but the substance I remember
perfectly. Mr Wordsworth argues, that if it were not for the unsteady
faith which people fix upon the beatific condition after death of those
whom they deplore, nobody could be found so selfish, as even secretly to
wish for the restoration to earth of a beloved object. A mother, for
instance, could never dream of yearning for her child, and secretly
calling it back by her silent aspirations from the arms of God, if she
were but reconciled to the belief that really it _was_ in those arms. But
this I utterly deny. To take my own case, when I heard those dreadful
words of St Paul applied to my sister--viz. that she should be raised a
spiritual body--nobody can suppose that selfishness, or any other feeling
than that of agonizing love, caused the rebellion of my heart against
them. I knew already that she was to come again in beauty and power. I did
not now learn this for the first time. And that thought, doubtless, made
my sorrow sublimer;