en. But did not for many years, even to her dying
hour, get quite over a gloom, which was left upon her countenance.

In violent grief, when tears flow, it is esteemed a good symptom; because
then the actions caused by sensitive association take the place of those
caused by volition; that is, they prevent the voluntary exertions of ideas,
or muscular actions, which constitute insanity.

The sobbing and sighing attendant upon grief are not convulsive movements,
they are occasioned by the sensorial power being so expended on the painful
ideas, and their connections, that the person neglects to breathe for a
time, and then a violent sigh or sob is necessary to carry on the blood,
which oppresses the pulmonary vessels, which is then performed by deep or
quick inspirations, and laborious expirations. Sometimes nevertheless the
breath is probably for a while voluntarily held, as an effort to relieve
pain. The paleness and ill health occasioned by long grief is spoken of in
Class IV. 2. 1. 9.

The melioration of grief by time, and its being at length even attended
with pleasure, depends on our retaining a distinct idea of the lost object,
and forgetting for a time the idea of the loss of it. This pleasure of
grief is beautifully described by Akenside. Pleasures of Imagination, Book
II. l. 680.

----------Ask the faithful youth,
Why the cold urn of her, whom long he loved,
So often fills his arms; so often draws
His lonely footsteps at the silent hour
To pay the mournful tribute of his tears?
Oh! he will tell thee, that the wealth of worlds
Should ne'er seduce his bosom to forego
That sacred hour; when, stealing from the noise
Of care and envy, sweet remembrance soothes
With Virtue's kindest looks his aching breast,
And turns his tears to rapture.

M. M. Consolation is best supplied by the Christian doctrine of a happy
immortality. In the pagan religion the power of dying was the great
consolation in irremediable distress. Seneca says, "no one need be unhappy
unless by his own fault." And the author of Telemachus begins his work by
saying, that Calypso could not console herself for the loss of Ulysses, and
found herself unhappy in being immortal. In the first hours of grief the
methods of consolation used by uncle Toby, in Tristram Shandy, is probably
the best; "he sat down in an arm chair by the bed of his distressed friend,
and said nothing."

11. _Taedium vitae._ The inanity of sublunary thin