that more natural condition of the heart, which, indeed,
is generally most feared by the ordinary paraclete. In the case of the
bereaved husband, there is no charm so powerful in its effects as the vivid
portrayment of the virtues of her who has gone down to the grave; and it
may well be said, that the heart that will not give out its feelings to the
impassioned description of the amiable properties of the departed helpmate,
is all but incurable. The sister of Mr B----, who saw the necessity of
administering relief, tried to awaken him to a sense of religious
consolation; but he was as yet unfit even for that sacred ministration; and
all her efforts having failed to rouse him, even from the deathlike stupor
in which he lay, she had recourse, by my advice, to probing the wound, to
take off the stricture by which the natural humours were pent up. She
discoursed pathetically on the qualities of the departed, which, she said,
would be the passport of her spirit to a sphere where he would again
contemplate them unclouded by the dingy vapours of earthly feelings. She
kept in the same strain for a lengthened period; but declared to me, when I
visited him again, that he exhibited no signs of being moved by her
discourse. He, once or twice, turned his eyes on her for a moment, drew
occasionally a heavy sigh, that told, by the difficulty of the operation,
the load with which he was oppressed; but his eyes were dry, no groan
escaped from him, or any other sign of the heart being aided in an effort
to restore the current of natural feeling. The _coup de peine_ had too
clearly taken the very core of the heart; the lamp of hope had been dashed
out violently, and, under the cloud of his great evil, all things that
remained to him upon earth were tinged with its dark hues. He presented all
the appearances--except the dilation of the pupil of the eye--of one whose
brain had been concussed by a deep fall, or laboured under a fracture of
the bones of the _cranium_. The few words he spoke to me came slowly, with
a heavy oppressive sound, as if spoken through a hollow tube; and what may,
to some, be remarkable, though certainly not to me, they embraced not the
slightest allusion to his bereavement--a symptom almost invariably
attendant upon those deeper strokes of grief, which, being but seldom
witnessed, are much less understood in their effects than the more ordinary
oppressions, whose intense demonstrations and allusions to the cause of the