How many people have I known, and these not the least endearing and capable of their kind, over whose whole lives the shadow of a memory, though growing fainter day by day, has yet been dark enough to throw a gloom that the warmest rays of friendship and affection were powerless to dispel! Sometimes, indeed, that darkness seems dearer to them than the glories of the outer world; sometimes, and this is the hardest fate of all, they cling to it the closer that they feel the illusion has been to them a more reliable possession than the reality. There is a world of tender longing, bitter experience, and sad, suggestive pathos in Owen Meredith's lament—
"How many a night 'neath her window have I walked in the wind and the rain,
Only to look on her shadow fleet over the lighted pane!
Alas! 'twas the shadow that rested—'twas herself that fleeted, you see—
And now I am dying—I know—it! Dying—and where is she?"
