o us--now--they
sound like a knell. Religion has instructed Philosophy; and for Fate we
substitute God. But all men feel that the foundations of Faith are laid
in the dark depths of their being, and that all human happiness is
mysteriously allied with pain and sorrow. The most perfect bliss is ever
awful, as if we enjoyed it under the shadow of some great and gracious
wing that would not long be detained from heaven.

It is not for ordinary minds to attempt giving utterance to such
simplicities. On their tongues truths become truisms. Sentiments, that
seem always fresh, falling from the lips of moral wisdom, are stale in
the mouths of men uninitiated in the greater mysteries. Genius colours
common words with an impressive light, that makes them moral to all
eyes--breathes into them an affecting music, that steals into all hearts
like a revelation and a religion. They become memorable. They pass, as
maxims, from generation to generation; and all because the divinity that
is in every man's bosom responds to the truthful strain it had of yore
itself inspired. Just so with the men we meet on our life-journey. One
man is impressive in all his looks and words, on all serious or solemn
occasions; and we carry away with us moral impressions from his eyes or
lips. Another man says the same things, or nearly so, and perhaps with
more fervour, and his locks are silver. But we forget his person in an
hour; nor does his voice ever haunt our solitude.
Simonides--Solon--Esop!--why do such lines of theirs as those assure us
they were Sages? The same sentiments are the staple of many a sermon
that has soothed sinners into snoring sleep.

Men take refuge even in ocular deception from despair. Over buried
beauty, that once glowed with the same passion that consumes themselves,
they build a white marble tomb, or a green grass grave, and forget much
they ought to remember--all profounder thoughts--while gazing on the
epitaph of letters or flowers. 'Tis a vision to their senses, with which
Imagination would fain seek to delude Love. And 'tis well that the
deception prospers; for what if Love could bid the burial-ground give
up or disclose its dead? Or if Love's eyes saw through dust as through
air? What if this planet--which men call Earth--were at all times seen
and felt to be a cemetery circling round the sun that feeds it with
death, and not a globe of green animated with life--even as the dewdrop
on the rose's leaf is animated with mill