of your
anxiety for some beloved relative, you may be induced to persevere in
such close attendance on the sick-bed as may seriously injure your own
health, and unfit you for more useful, and certainly more self-denying
exertion afterwards. How much easier is it to spend days and nights by
the sick-bed of one from whom we are in hourly dread of a final
separation, whose helpless and suffering state excites the strongest
feelings of compassion and anxiety, than to sit by the sofa, or walk by
the side, of the same invalid when she has regained just sufficient
strength to experience discomfort in every thing;--when she never finds
her sofa arranged or placed to her satisfaction; is never pleased with
the carriage, or the drive, or the walk you have chosen; is never
interested in the book or the conversation with which you anxiously and
laboriously try to amuse her. Here it is that woman's power of
endurance, that the real strength and nobleness of her character is put
to the most difficult test. Well, too, has this test been borne: right
womanly has been the conduct of many a loving wife, mother, and sister,
under the trying circumstances above described. Woman alone, perhaps,
can steadily maintain the clear vision of what the beloved one really
is, and can patiently view the wearisome ebullitions of ill-temper and
discontent as symptoms equally physical with a cough or a hectic flush.

This noble picture of self-control can be realized only by those who
keep even the best instincts of a woman's nature under the government of
strict principle, remembering that the most beautiful of these instincts
may not be followed without guidance or restraint. Those who yield to
such instincts without reflection and self-denial will exhaust their
energies before the time comes for the fulfilment of duties.

The third branch of my subject is the most difficult. It may, indeed,
appear strange that we should not have the right to sacrifice our own
happiness: that surely belongs to us to dispose of, if nothing else
does. Besides, happiness is evidently not the state of being intended
for us here below; and that much higher state of mind from which all
"_hap_"[44] is excluded--viz. blessedness--is seldom granted unless the
other is altogether withdrawn.

You must, however, observe that this blessedness is only granted when
the lower state--that of happiness--could not be preserved except by a
positive breach of duty, or when it is withhe