whenever help is
wanted.' That is right in some measure, and a very convenient doctrine
for the people who hold it; but I perceive that certain sets of human
beings are very apt to maintain that other sets should give up their
lives to them and their service, and then they requite them by praise;
they call them devoted and virtuous. Is this enough? Is it to live? Is
there not a terrible hollowness, mockery, want, craving, in that
existence which is given away to others, for want of something of your
own to bestow it on? I suspect there is. Does virtue lie in abnegation
of self? I do not believe it. Undue humility makes tyranny; weak
concession creates selfishness. The Romish religion especially teaches
renunciation of self, submission to others, and nowhere are found so
many grasping tyrants as in the ranks of the Romish priesthood. Each
human being has his share of rights. I suspect it would conduce to the
happiness and welfare of all if each knew his allotment, and held to it
as tenaciously as the martyr to his creed. Queer thoughts these that
surge in my mind. Are they right thoughts? I am not certain.

"Well, life is short at the best. Seventy years, they say, pass like a
vapour, like a dream when one awaketh; and every path trod by human feet
terminates in one bourne--the grave, the little chink in the surface of
this great globe, the furrow where the mighty husbandman with the scythe
deposits the seed he has shaken from the ripe stem; and there it falls,
decays, and thence it springs again, when the world has rolled round a
few times more. So much for the body. The soul meantime wings its long
flight upward, folds its wings on the brink of the sea of fire and
glass, and gazing down through the burning clearness, finds there
mirrored the vision of the Christian's triple Godhead--the sovereign
Father, the mediating Son, the Creator Spirit. Such words, at least,
have been chosen to express what is inexpressible, to describe what
baffles description. The soul's real hereafter who shall guess?"

Her fire was decayed to its last cinder; Malone had departed; and now
the study bell rang for prayers.

The next day Caroline had to spend altogether alone, her uncle being
gone to dine with his friend Dr. Boultby, vicar of Whinbury. The whole
time she was talking inwardly in the same strain--looking forwards,
asking what she was to do with life. Fanny, as she passed in and out of
the room occasionally, intent on housemaid er