comes home to my conscience," said Monteath: "_I_ am now under
trial, and such ought to be its effect upon me. But your sister's
circumstances have been such as to draw her attention from herself, to
carry out her affections and fix them on various objects: but I am
afraid the direct tendency of personal suffering is to produce
selfishness."

"It may either do that or the reverse, I believe," said Charles: "I have
known instances of both. I have heard of a cousin of my mother's, who
was a cripple from disease. She passed through life very quietly. She
never complained of her deprivations: her temper was placid, and she
found employment for her cultivated intellect in studies of various
kinds: but nobody was ever the better for them. She did no good, though
she never did any harm: she never seemed to love any one person more
than another, and of course nobody was particularly attached to her.
She lived to the age of sixty, and went on with her own pursuits to the
very last, but she left no trace behind her of beneficent deeds, and she
lived in the memory and not in the affections of those around her. I
have always grieved over the wasted talents of this lady. Half her
learning communicated to those less informed than herself, half her time
(of which she had abundance) devoted to the assistance of her
neighbours, half her affections exchanged with those who were disposed
to love her, would have made her wise instead of learned, useful instead
of harmless, beloved rather than served, and mourned rather than merely
remembered."

"But she could not have been a pious woman," said Monteath. "A life of
selfishness is inconsistent with piety."

"Nobody can say that she was not religious," replied Charles; "because
nobody knew what she felt and thought: some say that she must have been
pious, or she could not have been placid and contented under her
deprivations. I should therefore suppose that she had just enough
reliance upon Providence to prevent a naturally cheerful mind from being
corroded by discontent: but it is easy to see that she had not those
comprehensive views, which teach that the very best of selfish
pleasures, those of intellectual cultivation, are to be pursued as a
means only, not as an end, and that the grand design for which we are
created is to diminish continually our concern for ourselves in an
increasing love of God and our neighbour."

"I cannot help," said Monteath, "applying cases like thes