cally good. Maggie, with that divine instinct which women
possess--what a perfectly beautiful thing it is!--has somehow contrived
to discern that things are amiss with me, and I can perceive that she
tries all that her little heart and mind can devise to please, soothe,
interest me. But I do not want to be ministered to, exquisite as the
instinct is in the child; and all the time I am as far off my object as
ever. I cannot work, I cannot think. I have said fine things in my
books about the discipline of reluctant suffering; and now my feeling
is that I could bear any other kind of trial better. It seems to be
given to me with an almost demoniacal prescience of what should most
dishearten me.

"It would not school the shuddering will
To patience, were it sweet to bear,"

says an old poet; and it is true, I have no doubt; but, good God, to
think that a man, so richly dowered as I am with every conceivable
blessing, should yet have so small a reserve of faith and patience!
Even now I can frame epigrams about it. "To learn to be content not to
be content"--that is the secret--but meanwhile I stumble in dark paths,
through the grove nullo penetrabilis astro, where men have wandered
before now. It seems fine and romantic enough, when one thinks of
another soul in torment. One remembers the old sage, reading quietly at
a sunset hour, who had a sudden vision of the fate that should befall
him. His book falls from his hands, he sits there, a beautiful and
venerable figure enough, staring heavily into the void. It makes me
feel that I shall never dare to draw the picture of a man in the grip
of suffering again; I have had so little of it in my life, and I have
drawn it with a luxurious artistic emotion. I remember once saying of a
friend that his work was light and trivial, because he had never
descended into hell. Now that I have myself set foot there, I feel art
and love, and life itself, shrivel in the relentless chill--for it is
icy cold and drearily bright in hell, not dark and fiery, as poets have
sung! I feel that I could wrestle better with the loss of health, of
wealth, of love, for there would be something to bear, some burden to
lift. Now there is nothing to bear, except a blank purposelessness
which eats the heart out of me. I am in the lowest place, in the
darkness and the deep.

January 8, 1889.

Snow underfoot this morning; and a brown blink on the horizon which
shows that more is coming. I have t