to endure, and often to inflict severe sufferingall my sins, all my misery, past, present and to come, rose up against me in that walk; and I fancied that I actually beheld the black spirit embodied, that has so often crossed my path in life that I saw the living dead rise up against me:--a thousand fancies began to throng my memory. I walked on a considerable distance, when the fear of losing my way, and passing the night in the woods, made me turn back. Soon after retracing my steps by the ruined hermitage, I got into a more composed state of feeling towards myself and human nature in general. Just as I came into the walk directly under the convent, the sun-set reflected against the rocky mountain struck my eyes in all its glory, as if heaven had sent me a token of peace and forgiveness. The evening service had begun in the monastery, and the chant I distinctly heard through the woods, with the words in Domino confido, &c. &c. In the Lord put I my trust, &c. For the first time for years, bitter tears ran down my cheeks; the full peal of the organ came in all its splendour across the water. Again that uncontrolled fulness of sound, with the words Salvum me!!! reached me. I resolved to make the sacrifice of my feelings, my wishes, my hopes. The thoughts that passed through my mind that day I cannot write-but I shed bitter tears, and resolved upon my sacrifice-and have kept to my resolution. And it is said by the people of the world, by those who are slaves to the proud and the great, by the little ambitious, and the great mean,it is said by those persons, that feelings, and thoughts, and likings, and dislikings, are the same all over the world in all people of the same class and education! Who but God can know what inward torture is often felt, under a smiling countenance and a calm look and manner? How acute then is that suffering that makes the brow ruffled, and the countenance a changed one! The gay children of the earth, who laugh and sing and are always children, cannot know these feelings; but we, whose mental grave comes early in life, partly by our destiny, partly by our unfortunate disposition which has made that destiny, get but one good feeling out of the general devastation of mind that ensues-an indulgence for the failings, even for the insanity of others, and a sensation of awful solemnity at that stroke of strong feeling, sometimes of good, sometimes of bad passions, that is sent upon the mind; sent suddenly, as the heathens represented the sacred fire falling on the victim offered up to their Gods. |