, I
perceive many traces here and there of the Irish Nora, for the Irish
Nora was not without a sense of duty, of kindness towards others, but
the English Nora seems bent upon a life of pleasure, intellectual and
worldly adventures. She delights in foreign travel, and no doubt places
feelings above ideas, and regards our instincts as our sovereign guides.
Now, when we find ourselves delighting to this extent in the visible,
we may be sure that our lives have wandered far away from spiritual
things. There is ever a divorce between the world of sense and the world
of spirit, and the question of how much love we may expend upon external
things will always arise, and will always be a cause of perplexity to
those who do not choose to abandon themselves to the general drift of
sensual life. This question is as difficult as the cognate question of
what are our duties toward ourselves and our duties toward others. And
your letters raise all these questions. I ponder them in my walks by the
lake in the afternoon. In the evening in my house on the hilltop I sit
thinking, seeing in imagination the country where I have been born and
where I have always lived--the lake winding in and out of headlands, the
highroad shaded by sycamores at one spot, a little further on wandering
like a gray thread among barren lands, with here and there a village;
and I make application of all the suggestions your letters contain to my
own case. Every house in Garranard I know, and I see each gable end and
each doorway as I sit thinking, and all the faces of my parishioners. I
see lights springing up far and near. Wherever there is a light there is
a poor family.

'Upon these people I am dependent for my daily bread, and they are
dependent upon me for spiritual consolation. I baptize them, I marry
them, and I bury them. How they think of me, I know not. I suppose they
hardly think at all. When they return home at night they have little
time for thinking; their bodies are too fatigued with the labour of the
fields. But as I sit thinking of them, I regret to say that my fear
often is that I shall never see any human beings but them; and I dream
of long rambles in the French country, resting at towns, reading in
libraries. A voice whispers, "You could do very well with a little of
her life, but you will never know any other life but your present one."
A great bitterness comes up, a little madness gathers behind the eyes; I
walk about the room and then I s