orred blankness of dismay to which no positive
suffering may be likened. Thither comes no fierce provocation to quicken
into Promethean scorn; life lies whelmed in blackness unlit by flashes
of defiance or the cold splendour of disdain.

Empedocles once described his dream of retribution for the last
unutterable offence. For thrice ten thousand years the sinner roams
estranged from bliss, taking all mortal shapes, wearing with tired feet
all the sad ways of life. AEther sweeps him out to Ocean, Ocean casts him
naked on the shores of Earth, Earth hurls him upward to the flames of
Helios, and he, relentless, spurns the victim back to AEther, that the
dread cycle may begin anew. But to be for ever driven in this majestic
whirl of change, to receive the chastisement of all elements and survive
unbroken for a new revolution of the wheel, this is but an assurance of
the very pride of life, it is the charter of an invincible manhood. The
doom which in truth befits the unutterable sin is rather the blank pain
without accident or period, without point or salience to draw from
stunned nature her last energies of resentment. It is well for me that
this misery is short-lived, and that either by thinking on that ideal
love I know the miracle of the twenty-ninth sonnet, or, struggling with
instant effort out of the toils, try to see myself as I appear to
others, one who should scorn to sit in thirst when there are wells yet
for the seeking.

It is a strange life to lead in this pleasureful world; and if when it
is over I were condemned to live again, coming like Er the Armenian to
that meadow where the lots are thrown down for each to choose his own, I
am already decided what character I should elect to play. I should
neither cast myself for a protagonist's part nor again for that of a
dumb actor in those backgrounds I know too well; but just for a plain
manly character, strong to face all fortunes and rich in troops of
friends. There should be no more evasion or dreary wrestling of mind
with body; but life should move to a restrained harmony, and no elusive
wind should carry half the music away.

As for what remains of this present dispensation, I shall know how to
endure, trusting that the years may fade finely, like the figures in an
old tapestry, and that the end may come to me as to the old gentleman in
Hans Christian Andersen's story of the Old House. And I have this
advantage over other men, that while they have the whole co