‘Although I do not believe in a Special Providence regulating outward events, and could not reconcile such a belief with what I have seen of life, I do not the less believe in the paternal government of a Deity. That He should visit the souls of those who seek Him seems to me the nobler way to conceive of his influence. And if there were not some error in my way of seeking, I do not believe I should suffer from languor or deadness on spiritual subjects, at the time when I have most need to feel myself at home there. To find this error is my earnest wish; and perhaps I am now travelling to that end, though by a thorny road. It is a mortification to find so much yet to do; for at one time the scheme of things seemed so clear, that, with Cromwell, I might say, “I was once in grace.” With my mind I prize high objects as much as then; it is my heart which is cold. And sometimes I fear that the necessity of urging them on those under my care dulls my sense of their beauty. It is so hard to prevent one’s feelings from evaporating in words.’
‘“The faint sickness of a wounded heart.” How
frequently do these words of Beckford recur to my
mind! His prayer, imperfect as it is, says more to me
than many a purer aspiration. It breathes such an
experience of impassioned anguish. He had
everything, — health, personal advantages, almost boundless
wealth, genius, exquisite taste, culture; he could, in
some way, express his whole being. Yet well-nigh he
sank beneath the sickness of the wounded heart; and
solitude, “country of the unhappy,” was all he craved
at last.
‘Goethe, too, says he has known, in all his active,
