th,
But has its chord in melancholy."

Again, in science, we have the noble instance of the suffering
Wollaston, even in the last stages of the mortal disease which afflicted
him, devoting his numbered hours to putting on record, by dictation, the
various discoveries and improvements he had made, so that any knowledge
he had acquired, calculated to benefit his fellow-creatures, might not
be lost.

Afflictions often prove but blessings in disguise. "Fear not the
darkness," said the Persian sage; it "conceals perhaps the springs of
the waters of life." Experience is often bitter, but wholesome; only
by its teaching can we learn to suffer and be strong. Character, in
its highest forms, is disciplined by trial, and "made perfect through
suffering." Even from the deepest sorrow, the patient and thoughtful
mind will gather richer wisdom than pleasure ever yielded.

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decayed, Lets in new light
through chinks that Time has made."

"Consider," said Jeremy Taylor, "that sad accidents, and a state of
afflictions, is a school of virtue. It reduces our spirits to soberness,
and our counsels to moderation; it corrects levity, and interrupts
the confidence of sinning.... God, who in mercy and wisdom governs the
world, would never have suffered so many sadnesses, and have sent them,
especially, to the most virtuous and the wisest men, but that He intends
they should be the seminary of comfort, the nursery of virtue, the
exercise of wisdom, the trial of patience, the venturing for a crown,
and the gate of glory." [2116]

And again:--"No man is more miserable than he that hath no adversity.
That man is not tried, whether he be good or bad; and God never crowns
those virtues which are only FACULTIES and DISPOSITIONS; but every act
of virtue is an ingredient unto reward." [2117]

Prosperity and success of themselves do not confer happiness; indeed,
it not unfrequently happens that the least successful in life have the
greatest share of true joy in it. No man could have been more
successful than Goethe--possessed of splendid health, honour, power, and
sufficiency of this world's goods--and yet he confessed that he had not,
in the course of his life, enjoyed five weeks of genuine pleasure.
So the Caliph Abdalrahman, in surveying his successful reign of fifty
years, found that he had enjoyed only fourteen days of pure and genuine
happiness. [2118] After this, might it not be said that the pu