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rest centred in a very few simple truths. I do not want to ignore the other side, that one will not be able to see so well, or walk so far, or read so much. But there may be more peace within, more communion with God, more real light instead of distraction about many things, better relations with others, fewer mistakes. The quality of human life does not consist in bustle or activity, but in stillness and in the heart. Therefore I will never look upon the years that are before me as a time of decay. I mean to fight the battle out as well as I can, and fill up some of the shortcomings of youth and middle life.1

EMILY BRONTË . . (1818-1848)

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere :
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life-that in me has rest,

As I-undying Life-have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds,

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

1 From letter to the Countess of Wemyss, December 17, 1890.

I

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity,
So surely anchored on

The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is no room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void :
Thou-Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.1

IVAN TURGÉNEV

(1818-1883)

WONDER what I shall think when I come to die -in case I shall be in a condition to think of anything?

Shall I think to what bad account I have turned my life, how I have slept and dreamt it away, how unfitted I have been to enjoy its gifts?

"How? Surely this is not death? So soon! Impossible! Why, I have as yet accomplished nothing in life. . . . I am only now really beginning to think of accomplishing something!"

1 "Last Lines."

Shall I think on the past,-and linger in spirit with the few bright moments of my life-with the forms and persons that were dear to me?

Will my evil deeds intrude themselves on my memory—and will my soul feel the burning pain of a too late repentance?

Shall I think on that which awaits me beyond the grave? . . . Yes, and does anything await me there?

No! . . . I believe I shall try not to think at all, and shall occupy myself eagerly with some trifle or other, in order to divert my attention from the threatening darkness, the darkness-ever blacker and blackerencompassing me.

I was present once when a dying man complained that they would not give him any nuts to eat! ... and only in the depths of his sad eyes something trembled and quivered—something which reminded one of the shattered wings of a bird wounded to death.1

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE

WH

(1818-1894)

THEN the weather is bad the wounds of old sins and follies, long forgotten too, begin to ache again. It were much better never to have been. Perhaps we are responsible even for having been born. It may have been the penalty of some delinquency in a past existence. El mayor delito es haber nacido.

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The great alteration I find in myself is the disappearance of hope. I don't mean as regards another life, or that one has grown despondent. Not the least that,

1 From Senilia ("What Shall I Think?" .), 1879.

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but simply that one has so short a future in this world that it is no longer worth while to think about it. Thus the personal element is taken out of every equation, and one looks at things without the twist from personal interest or emotion.1

MRS. OLIPHANT (About 1818–1897)

LIFE, though it is short, is very long, and contains

it

so much. I have had trials which-I say with full knowledge of all the ways of mental suffering -have been harder than sorrow. I have lived a laborious life-incessant work, incessant anxiety, and yet so strange, so capricious is this human being, that I would not say I have had an unhappy life. . . . Sometimes I am miserable—always there is in me the sense that I may have active cause to be so at any moment—always the gnawing pangs of anxiety, and deep, deep dissatisfaction beyond words, and the sense of helplessness, which of itself is despair. And yet there are times when my heart jumps up in the old unreasonable way, and I am—yes, happy-though the word seems so inappropriate without any cause for it, with so many causes the other way.2

I made on the whole a large income-and spent it, taking no thought of the morrow. Yes, taking a great deal of thought of the morrow in the way of constant work and constant undertaking of whatever kind of work came to my hand. . . . I pay the penalty in that I shall not leave anything behind me that will live. 1 From a letter (undated). 2 From Autobiography.

What does it matter? Nothing at all now-never anything to speak of. At my most ambitious of times I would rather my children had remembered me as their mother than in any other way, and my friends as their friend. I never cared for anything else. And now that there are no children to whom to leave any memory, and the friends drop day by day, what is the reputation of a circulating library to me? Nothing, and less than nothing a thing the thought of which now makes me angry, that any one should for a moment imagine I cared for that, or that it made up for any loss.1

I try to realise heaven to myself, and I cannot do it. The more I think of it the less I am able to feel that those who have left us can start up at once in a heartless beatitude without caring for our sorrow. Do they sleep until the great day? Or does time so cease for them that it seems but a matter of hours and minutes till we meet again? God who is Love cannot give immortality and annihilate affection; that surely, at least, we must take for granted as sure as they live they live to love us. Human nature in the flesh cannot be more faithful, more tender, than the purified human soul in heaven. Where, then, are they, those who have gone before us? Some people say around us, still knowing all that occupies us; but that is an idea I cannot entertain either. It would not be happiness but pain to be beside those we love, yet unable to communicate with them, unable to make ourselves known.2

1 From Autobiography.

2 Ibid. Written at Rome in 1864, after the death of her daughter.

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