d depressed me much. Both did me
good, especially the letter. I have only one fault to find with your
expressions of friendship: they make me ashamed, because they seem to
imply that you think better of me than I merit. I believe you are
prone to think too highly of your fellow-creatures in general--to see
too exclusively the good points of those for whom you have a regard.
Disappointment must be the inevitable result of this habit. Believe
all men, and women too, to be dust and ashes--a spark of the divinity
now and then kindling in the dull heap--that is all. When I looked
on the noble face and forehead of my dead brother (nature had
favoured him with a fairer outside, as well as a finer constitution,
than his sisters) and asked myself what had made him go ever wrong,
tend ever downwards, when he had so many gifts to induce to, and aid
in, an upward course, I seemed to receive an oppressive revelation of
the feebleness of humanity--of the inadequacy of even genius to lead
to true greatness if unaided by religion and principle. In the
value, or even the reality, of these two things he would never
believe till within a few days of his end; and then all at once he
seemed to open his heart to a conviction of their existence and
worth. The remembrance of this strange change now comforts my poor
father greatly. I myself, with painful, mournful joy, heard him
praying softly in his dying moments; and to the last prayer which my
father offered up at his bedside he added, "Amen." How unusual that
word appeared from his lips, of course you, who did not know him,
cannot conceive. Akin to this alteration was that in his feelings
towards his relations--all the bitterness seemed gone.

'When the struggle was over, and a marble calm began to succeed the
last dread agony, I felt, as I had never felt before, that there was
peace and forgiveness for him in Heaven. All his errors--to speak
plainly, all his vices--seemed nothing to me in that moment: every
wrong he had done, every pain he had caused, vanished; his sufferings
only were remembered; the wrench to the natural affections only was
left. If man can thus experience total oblivion of his fellow's
imperfections, how much more can the Eternal Being, who made man,
forgive His creature?

'Had his sins been scarlet in their dye, I belie