I am here inclined to part company with wise men and
poets who have spoken and sung of the consoling power of nature. I
think it is not so. It is true that anything which we love very deeply
has a certain power of distracting the mind. But I think there is no
greater agony than to be confronted with tranquil passionate beauty,
when the heart and spirit are out of tune with it. In the days of one's
joy, nature laughs with us; in the days of vague and fantastic
melancholy, there is an air of wistfulness, of mystery, that ministers
to our luxurious sadness. But when one bears about the heavy burden of
a harassing anxiety of sorrow, then the smile on the face of nature has
something poisonous, almost maddening about it. It breeds an emotion
that is like the rage of Othello when he looks upon the face of
Desdemona, and believes her false. Nature has no sympathy, no pity. She
has her work to do, and the swift and bright process goes on; she casts
her failures aside with merciless glee; she seems to say to men
oppressed by sorrow and sickness, "This is no world for you; rejoice
and make merry, or I have no need of you." In a far-off way, indeed,
the gentle beauty of nature may help a sad heart, by seeming to assure
one that the mind of God is set upon what is fair and sweet; but
neither God nor nature seems to have any direct message to the stricken
heart.

"Not till the fire is dying in the grate
Look we for any kinship with the stars,"

says a subtle poet; and such comfort as nature can give is not the
direct comfort of sympathy and tenderness, but only the comfort that
can be resolutely distilled from the contemplation of nature by man's
indomitable spirit. For nature tends to replace rather than to heal;
and the sadness of life consists for most of us in the
irreplaceableness of the things we love and lose. The lesson is a hard
one, that "Nature tolerates, she does not need." Let us only be sure
that it is a true one, for nothing but the truth can give us ultimate
repose. To the youthful spirit it is different, for all that the young
and ardent need is that, if the old fails them, some new delight should
be substituted. They but desire that the truth should be hidden from
their gaze; as in the childish stories, when the hero and heroine have
been safely piloted through danger and brought into prosperity, the
door is closed with a snap. "They lived happily ever afterwards." But
the older spirit knows that the "