n tendencies. That which I desired, was the thing which I ought to
desire; the mercy that I loved was the mercy that God had blessed. From
the sermon on the Mount resounded for ever in my ears--"Blessed are the
merciful!" I needed not to add--"For they shall obtain mercy." By lips so
holy, and when standing in the atmosphere of truths so divine, simply to
have been blessed--_that_ was a sufficient ratification; every truth so
revealed, and so hallowed by position, starts into sudden life, and
becomes to itself its own authentication, needing no proof to convince,
needing no promise to allure.

It may well be supposed, therefore, that, having so early awakened within
me what may be philosophically called the _transcendental_ justice of
Christianity, I blamed not _Turk_ for yielding to the coercion of his
nature. He had killed the object of my love. But, besides that he was
under the constraint of a primary appetite--Turk was himself the victim of
a killing oppression. He was doomed to a fretful existence so long as he
should exist at all. Nothing could reconcile this to my benignity, which
at that time rested upon two pillars--upon the deep, deep heart which God
had given to me at my birth, and upon exquisite health. Up to the age of
two, and almost through that entire space of twenty-four months, I had
suffered from ague; but when _that_ left me, all germs and traces of ill
health fled away for ever--except only such (and those how curable!) as I
inherited from my schoolboy distresses in London, or had created by means
of opium. Even the long ague was not without ministrations of favour to my
prevailing temper; and on the whole, no subject for pity; since naturally
it won for me the sweet caresses of female tenderness both young and old.
I was a little petted; but you see by this time, reader, that I must have
been too much of a philosopher, even in the year one _ab urbe condita_ of
my frail earthly tenement, to abuse such indulgence. It also won for me a
ride on horseback whenever the weather permitted. I was placed on a
pillow, in front of a cankered old man, upon a large white horse, not so
young as _I_ was, but still showing traces of blood. And even the old man,
who was both the oldest and the worst of the three, talked with gentleness
to myself, reserving his surliness--for all the rest of the world.

These things pressed with a gracious power of incubation upon my
predispositions; and in my overflowing love I did