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. |