as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou
sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. Among the very
foremost of mine was morbid sensibility to shame. And ten years
afterwards, I used to reproach myself with this infirmity, by supposing
the case, that, if it were thrown upon me to seek aid for a perishing
fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that aid only by facing a vast
company of critical or sneering faces, I might perhaps shrink basely from
the duty. It is true, that no such case had ever actually occurred, so
that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so
shocking. But to feel a doubt, was to feel condemnation; and the crime
which _might_ have been, was in my eyes the crime which _had_ been. Now,
however, all was changed; and for any thing which regarded my sister's
memory, in one hour I received a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a
case resembling it. I saw a ewe suddenly put off and abjure her own
nature, in a service of love--yes, slough it as completely, as ever
serpent sloughed his skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from
which all escape was hopeless without the aid of man. And to a man she
advanced boldly, bleating clamorously, until he followed her and rescued
her beloved. Not less was the change in myself. Fifty thousand sneering
faces would not have troubled me in any office of tenderness to my
sister's memory. Ten legions would not have repelled me from seeking her,
if there was chance that she could be found. Mockery! it was lost upon me.
Laugh at me, as one or two people did! I valued not their laughter. And
when I was told insultingly to cease "my girlish tears", that word
"_girlish_" had no sting for me, except as a verbal echo to the one
eternal thought of my heart--that a girl was the sweetest thing I, in my
short life, had known--that a girl it was who had crowned the earth with
beauty, and had opened to my thirst fountains of pure celestial love, from
which, in this world, I was to drink no more.

Interesting it is to observe how certainly all deep feelings agree in
this, that they seek for solitude, and are nursed by solitude. Deep grief,
deep love, how naturally do these ally themselves with religious feeling;
and all three, love, grief, religion, are haunters of solitary places.
Love, grief, the passion of reverie, or the mystery of devotion--what were
these without solitude? All day long, when it was not impossible for me