e-human voices, dearer than all else, would cease to have any
meanings for me--and even their very echoes be hushed in the silence
of the one long sleep. Following the train of association, it was
natural that I should recur to the hour when that same church's
bells had chimed my wedding-peal. I seemed to hear their music once
again; and other music sweeter still--the music of young vows that
'kept the word of promise to the ear, and broke it' _not_ 'to the
hope.' Next in succession came the recollection of my children. I
seemed to lose sight of their present identity, and to be carried
away in thought to times and scenes far back in my long-departed
youth, when they were growing up around my knees--beautiful forms of
all ages, from the tender nursling of a single year springing with
outstretched arms into my bosom, to the somewhat rough but ingenuous
boy of ten. As my inner eye traced their different outlines, and
followed them in their graceful growth from year to year, my heart
was seized with a sudden and irresistible longing to hold fast these
beloved but passing images of the brain. What joy, I thought, would
it be to transfix the matchless beauty which had wrought itself thus
into the visions of my old age! to preserve for ever, unchanging,
every varied phase of that material but marvellous structure which
the glorious human soul had animated and informed through all its
progressive stages from the child to the man!

Scarcely was the thought framed when a dull, heavy weight seemed to
press upon my closed eyelids. I now saw more clearly even than
before my children's images in the different stages of their being.
But I saw these, and these alone, as they stood rooted to the
ground, with a stony fixedness in their eyes: every other object
grew dim before me. The living faces and full-grown forms which
until now had mingled with and played their part among my younger
phantoms, altogether disappeared. I had no longer any eyes, any
soul, but for this my new spectre-world. Life, and the things of
life, had lost their interest; and I knew of nothing, conceived of
nothing, but those still, inanimate forms from which the informing
soul had long since passed away.

And now that the longing of my heart was answered, was I satisfied?
For a time I gazed, and drew a deep delight from the gratification
of my vain and impious craving. But at length the still, cold
presence of forms no longer of this earth began to oppress me.