he darkest sorrow, the deepest shame are viewed by
God, and will some day be viewed by ourselves, in a light which will
make all things new; and that just as we look back on our childish
griefs with a smiling wonder, so we shall some day look back on our
mature and dreary sufferings with a tender and wistful air, marvelling
that we could be so short-sighted, so faithless, so blind.

And yet the thought of what the new year may hold for us cannot be
other than solemn. Like men on the eve of a great voyage, we know not
what may be in store, what shifting of scene, what loss, what grief,
what shadow of death. And then, again, the same grave peace flows in
upon the mind, as the bells ring out their sweet refrain, "It is He
that hath made us." Can we not rest in that?

What I hope more and more to do is to withdraw myself from material
aims and desires; not to aim at success, or dignity of office, or
parade of place. I wish to help, to serve, not to command or rule. I
long to write a beautiful book, to put into words something of the
sense of peace, of beauty and mystery, which visits me from time to
time. Every one has, I think, something of the heavenly treasure in
their hearts, something that makes them glad, that makes them smile
when they are alone; I want to share that with others, not to keep it
to myself. I drift, alas, upon an unknown sea; but sometimes I see,
across the blue rollers, the cliffs and shores of an unknown land,
perfectly and impossibly beautiful. Sometimes the current bears me away
from it; sometimes it is veiled in cloud-drift and weeping rain. But
there are days when the sun shines bright upon the leaping waves, and
the wind fills the sail and bears me thither. It is of that beautiful
land that I would speak, its pure outlines, its crag-hollows, its
rolling downs. Tendimus ad Latium, we steer to the land of hope.

And meanwhile I desire but to work in a corner; to make the few lives
that touch my own a little happier and braver; to give of my best, to
withhold what is base and poor. There is abundance of evil, of
weakness, of ugliness, of dreariness in my own heart; I only pray that
I may keep it there, not let it escape, not let it flow into other
lives.

The great danger of all natures like my own, which have a touch of what
is, I suppose, the artistic temperament, is a certain hardness, a
self-centred egotism, a want of lovingness and sympathy. One sees
things so clearly, one hankers so after