When Gertrude, at an early hour, retired to bed, Vane and Du-----e fell
into speculative conversation upon the nature of man. Vane's philosophy
was of a quiet and passive scepticism; the physician dared more boldly,
and rushed from doubt to negation. The attention of Trevylyan, as he sat
apart and musing, was arrested in despite of himself. He listened to an
argument in which he took no share, but which suddenly inspired him with
an interest in that awful subject which, in the heat of youth and the
occupations of the world, had never been so prominently called forth
before.

"What," thought he, with unutterable anguish, as he listened to the
earnest vehemence of the Frenchman and the tranquil assent of Vane, "if
this creed were indeed true,--if there be no other world,--Gertrude is
lost to me eternally, through the dread gloom of death there would break
forth no star!"

That is a peculiar incident that perhaps occurs to us all at times, but
which I have never found expressed in books, namely, to hear a doubt of
futurity at the very moment in which the present is most overcast; and
to find at once this world stripped of its delusion and the next of its
consolation. It is perhaps for others, rather than ourselves, that the
fond heart requires a Hereafter. The tranquil rest, the shadow, and the
silence, the mere pause of the wheel of life, have no terror for the
wise, who know the due value of the world.

"After the billows of a stormy sea,
Sweet is at last the haven of repose!"

But not so when that stillness is to divide us eternally from others;
when those we have loved with all the passion, the devotion, the
watchful sanctity of the weak human heart, are to exist to us no more!
when, after long years of desertion and widowhood on earth, there is
to be no hope of reunion in that INVISIBLE beyond the stars; when the
torch, not of life only, but of love, is to be quenched in the Dark
Fountain, and the grave, that we would fain hope is the great restorer
of broken ties, is but the dumb seal of hopeless, utter, inexorable
separation! And it is this thought, this sentiment, which makes religion
out of woe, and teaches belief to the mourning heart that in the
gladness of united affections felt not the necessity of a heaven! To how
many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith!

Stung by his thoughts, Trevylyan rose abruptly, and stealing from the
lowly hostelry, walked forth amidst the serene and deepen