to
it.

'Although I do not believe in a Special Providence regulating
outward events, and could not reconcile such a belief with
what I have seen of life, I do not the less believe in the
paternal government of a Deity. That He should visit the souls
of those who seek Him seems to me the nobler way to conceive
of his influence. And if there were not some error in my way
of seeking, I do not believe I should suffer from languor or
deadness on spiritual subjects, at the time when I have most
need to feel myself at home there. To find this error is my
earnest wish; and perhaps I am now travelling to that end,
though by a thorny road. It is a mortification to find so
much yet to do; for at one time the scheme of things seemed
so clear, that, with Cromwell, I might say, "I was once in
grace." With my mind I prize high objects as much as then:
it is my heart which is cold. And sometimes I fear that the
necessity of urging them on those under my care dulls my sense
of their beauty. It is so hard to prevent one's feelings from
evaporating in words.'

* * * * *

'"The faint sickness of a wounded heart." How frequently
do these words of Beckford recur to my mind! His prayer,
imperfect as it is, says more to me than many a purer
aspiration. It breathes such an experience of impassioned
anguish. He had everything,--health, personal advantages,
almost boundless wealth, genius, exquisite taste, culture; he
could, in some way, express his whole being. Yet well-nigh he
sank beneath the sickness of the wounded heart; and solitude,
"country of the unhappy," was all he craved at last.

'Goethe, too, says he has known, in all his active, wise, and
honored life, no four weeks of happiness. This teaches me on
the other side; for, like Goethe, I have never given way to
my feelings, but have lived active, thoughtful, seeking to
be wise. Yet I have long days and weeks of heartache; and
at those times, though I am busy every moment, and cultivate
every pleasant feeling, and look always upwards to the pure
ideal region, yet this ache is like a bodily wound, whose
pain haunts even when it is not attended to, and disturbs the
dreams of the patient who has fallen asleep from exhaustion.

'There is a German in Boston, who has a wound in his breast,
recei