With arms extended, and a commanding air, Elinor, having made signs to
the dismayed Harleigh not to move, awaited, where she stood, the
terrified, but obedient Juliet.
'Avoid me not!' she cried, 'Ellis! why should you avoid me? I have given
you back your plighted word; and the pride of Harleigh has saved him
from all bonds. Why, then, should you fly?'
Juliet attempted not to make any answer.
'The conference, the last conference,' continued Elinor, 'which so
ardently I have demanded, is still unaccorded. Repeatedly I could have
surprized it, singly, from Harleigh; but--'
She stopt, coloured, looked indignant, yet ashamed, and then haughtily
went on: 'Imagine not my courage tarnished by cowardly apprehensions of
misinterpretation,--suspicion,--censoriousness;... no! let the world
sneer at its pleasure! Its spleen will never keep pace with my contempt.
But Harleigh!--I brave not the censure of Harleigh! even though
prepared, and resolved, to quit him for evermore! And, with ideas
punctilious such as his of feminine delicacy, he might blame,
perhaps,--should I seek him alone--'
She blushed more deeply, and, with extreme agitation, added, 'Harleigh,
when we shall meet no more, will always honourably say, Her passion for
me might be tinctured with madness, but its purity was without alloy!'
She now turned away, to hide a starting tear; but, soon resuming her
usually lively manner, said, 'I have traced you, at last, together; and
by means of our caustick, bilious fellow-traveller, Riley; whom I
encountered by accident; and who runs, snarling, yet curious, after his
fellow-creatures, working at making himself enemies, as if enmity were a
pleasing, or lucrative profession! From him I learnt, that he had just
seen you,--and together!--near Salisbury. I discovered you, Ellis, two
days ago; but Harleigh, though I have been roving some time in your
vicinity, only this moment.'
A sudden shriek now broke from her, and Juliet, affrighted and looking
around, perceived Harleigh pacing hastily away.
The shriek reached him, and he stopt.
'Fly, fly, to him,' she cried, 'Ellis; assure him, I have no present
personal project; none! I solemnly promise, none! But I have an opinion
to gather from him, of which my ignorance burns, devours me, and will
not let me rest, alive nor dead!'
Juliet, distressed, irresolute, ventured not to move.
''Tis his duty,' continued Elinor, 'after his solemn declaration, to
initiate me into his motives for believing in a future state. I have
been distracting my burthened senses over theological works; but my head
is in no condition to comprehend them. They treat, also, of belief in a
future state, as of a thing not to be proved, but to be taken for
granted. Let him penetrate me with his own notions; or frankly
acknowledge their insufficiency. But let him mark that they are indeed
his own! Let them be neither fanatical, illusory, nor traditional.'
Juliet was compelled to obey; but while she was repeating her message,
Elinor descended the hill, and they all met at its foot.
'Harleigh,' she cried, 'fear me not! Do not imagine I shall again go
over the same ground;--at least, not with the monotonous stupidity of
again going over it in the same manner. Yet believe not my resolution to
be shaken! But I have some doubts, relative to your own principles and
opinions, of which I demand a solution.'
She then seated herself upon the turf, and made Harleigh seat himself
before her, while Juliet remained by her side.
'Can you feign, Harleigh? Can you endure to act a part, in defiance of
your nobler nature, merely to prolong my detested life? Do you join in
the popular cry against suicide, merely to arrest my impatient hand? If
not, initiate me, I beseech, in the series of pretended reasoning, by
which honour, honesty, and understanding such as yours, have been duped
into bigotry? How is it, explain! that you can have been worked upon to
believe in an existence after death? Ah, Harleigh! could you, indeed,
give so sublime a resting-place to my labouring ideas!--I would consent
to enter the ecclesiastical court myself, to sing the recantation of
what you deem my errours. And then, Albert, I might learn,--with all my
wretchedness!--to bear to live,--for then, I might seek and foster some
hope in dying!'
'Dear Elinor!' cried Harleigh, gently, almost tenderly, 'let me send for
some divine!'
'How conscious is this retreat,' she cried, 'of the weakness of your
cause! Ah! why thus try to bewilder a poor forlorn traveller, who is
dropping with fatigue upon her road? and to fret and goad her on, when
the poor tortured wretch languishes to give up the journey altogether?
Why not rather, more generously, more like yourself, aid her to attain
repose? to open her burning veins, and bid her pent up blood flow freely
to her relief? or kindly point the steel to her agonized heart, whose
last sigh would be ecstacy if it owed its liberation to your pitying
hand! Oh Harleigh! what vain prejudice, what superstitious sophistry,
robs me of the only solace that could soothe my parting breath?'
'What is it Elinor means?' cried Harleigh, alarmed, yet affecting to
speak lightly: 'Has she no compunction for the labour she causes my
blood in thus perpetually accelerating its circulation.'
'Pardon me, dear Harleigh, I have inadvertently run from my purpose to
my wishes. To the point, then. Make me, if it be possible, conceive how
your reason has thus been played upon, and your discernment been set
asleep. I have studied this matter abroad, with the ablest casuists, I
have met with; and though I may not retain, or detail their reasoning,
well enough to make a convert of any other, they have fixed for ever in
my own mind, a conviction that death and annihilation are one. Why do
you knit your brow?--And see how Ellis starts!--And why do you both look
at me as if I were mad? Mad? because I would rather crush misery than
endure it? Mad? because I would rather, at my own time, die the death of
reason, than by compulsion, and when least disposed, that of nature? Of
reason, that appreciates life but by enjoyment; not of nature, that
would make misery linger, till malady or old age dissolve the worn out
fabric. To indulge our little miserable fears and propensities, we give
flattering epithets to all our meannesses; for what is endurance of
worldly pain and affliction but folly? what patience, but insipidity?
what suffering, but cowardice? Oh suicide! triumphant antidote to woe!
straight forward, unerring route to rest, to repose! I call upon thy
aid! I invoke--'
'Repose?--rest?' interrupted Harleigh, 'how earned? By deserting our
duties? By quitting our posts? By forsaking and wounding all by whom we
are cherished?'
'One word, Harleigh, answers all that: Did we ask for our being? Why
was it given us if doomed to be wretched? To whom are we accountable for
renouncing a donation, made without our consent or knowledge? O, if ever
that wretched thing called life has a noble moment, it must surely be
that of its voluntary sacrifice! lopping off, at a blow, that
hydra-headed monster of evil upon evil, called time; bounding over the
imps of superstition; dancing upon the pangs of disease; and boldly,
hardily mocking the senseless legends, that would frighten us with
eternity!--Eternity? to poor, little, frail, finite beings like us! Oh
Albert! worldly considerations, monkish inventions, and superstitious
reveries set apart;--reason called forth, truth developed, probabilities
canvassed,--say! is it not clear that death is an end to all? an abyss
eternal? a conclusion? Nature comes but for succession; though the pride
of man would give her resurrection. Mouldering all together we go, to
form new earth for burying our successors.'
'Horrible, Elinor, most horrible! yet if, indeed, it is your opinion
that you are doomed to sink to nothing; if your soul, in the full tide
of its energies, and in the pride of intellect, seems to you a mere
appendant to the body; if you believe it to be of the same fragile
materials; how can you wish to shorten the so short period of
consciousness? to abridge the so brief moment of sensibility? Is it not
always time enough to think, feel, see, hear,--love and be loved no
more?'
'Yes! 'tis always too soon to lose happiness; but misery,--ah
Albert!--why should misery, when it can so easily be stilled, be
endured?'
'Stilled, Elinor?--What mean you? By annihilation?--How an infidel
assumes fortitude to wish for death, is my constant astonishment! To
believe in the eternal loss of all he holds, or knows, or feels; to be
persuaded that "this sensible, warm being" will "melt, thaw, and resolve
itself into a dew,"--and to believe that there all ends! Surely every
species of existence must be preferable to such an expectation from its
cessation! Dust! literal dust!--Food for worms!--to be trod
upon;--crushed;--dug up;--battered down;--is that our termination?
That,--and nothing more?'
'Tis shocking, Albert, no doubt; shocking and disgusting. Yet why
disguise the fact? Reason, philosophy, analogy, all prove our
materialism. Even common observation, even daily experience, in viewing
our natural end, where neither sickness nor accident impede, nor shorten
its progress, prove it by superannuation; shew clearly that mind and
body, when they die the long death of nature, gradually decline
together.'
'Were that double decay constant, Elinor, in its junction, you might
thence, perhaps, draw that inference; but does not the body wither as
completely by decay, in the very prime, and pride, and bloom of youth,
where the death is consumption, as in the most worn-out decrepitude of
age? Yet the capacity is often, even to the last minute, as perfect as
in the vigour of health. Were all within, as well as all without,
material, would not the blight to one involve, uniformly, the blight to
the other? How often, too, does age, even the oldest, escape any
previous decay of intellect! There are records extant, of those who,
after attaining their hundredth year, have been capable of bearing
testimony in trials; but are there any of those, who, at half that age,
have preserved their external appearance? No. It is the body, therefore,
not the soul, that, in a natural state, and free from the accelerations
of accident, seems first to degenerate. The grace of symmetry, the charm
of expression, may last with our existence, and delight to its latest
date; but that which we understand exclusively, as personal
perfections,--how soon is it over! Not only before the intellects are
impaired, but even, and not rarely, before they are arrived at their
full completion. Can mind, then, and body be but one and the same thing,
when they neither flourish nor wither together?'
'Ah, Harleigh! is it not your willing mind, that here frames its
sentiments from its exaltation? Not your deeper understanding, that
defines your future expectations from your rational belief?'
'No, Elinor; my belief in the immortality of the soul may be
strengthened, but it is not framed by my wishes. Let me, however, ask
you a question in return. Your disbelief of the immortality of the soul,
is founded on your inability to have it, visually, or orally,
demonstrated: Let me, then, ask, can the nature, use, and destinations
of the soul, however darkly hidden from our analysing powers, be more
impervious to our limited foresight, than the narrower, yet equally, to
us, invisible, destiny of our days to come upon earth? But does any one,
therefore, from not knowing its purposes, disbelieve that his life may
be lengthened? Yet which of us can divine what his fate will be from
year to year? What his actions, from hour to hour? his thoughts, from
moment to moment?'
'Oh Harleigh! how fatally is that true! how little did I foresee, when I
so delighted in your society, that that very delight would but impel me
to burn for the moment of bidding you an eternal farewell!'
Harleigh sighed; but with earnestness continued: 'We conceive the soul
to influence, if not to direct our whole construction, yet we have no
sensible proof of its being in any part of it: how, then, shall we
determine that to be destroyed or departed, which we have never known to
be created? never seen to exist? O bow we down! for all is inexplicable!
We can but say, the body is obvious in its perfection, and still obvious
in its decay; the soul is always unsearchable! were we sure it were only
our understanding, we might, perhaps, develop it; or only our feelings,
we might catch it; but it is something indefinable, of which the
consciousness tells us not the qualities, nor the possession the
attributes; and of which the end leaves no trace! We follow it not to
its dissolution like the body; which, after what we call death, is still
as evident, as when our conception of what is soul were yet lent to it:
if the soul, then, be equally material, say, is it still there also?
though as unseen and hidden as when breath and motion were yet
perceptible?'
'Body and soul, Albert, come together with existence, and together are
nullified by death.'
'And are you, Elinor, aware whither such reasoning may lead? If the body
instead of being the tenement of the soul, is but one and the same with
it;--how are you certain, if they are not sundered by death, that they
do not in death, though by means, and with effects to us unknown, still
exist together? That with the body, whether animated or inert, the soul
may not always be adherent? who shall assure you, who, at least, shall
demonstrate, that if the soul be but a part of the body, it may not
think, though no utterance can be given to its thoughts; and may not
feel, though all expression is at an end, and motion is no more? Whither
may such reasoning lead? to what strange suggestions may it not conduct
us? to what vain fantasies, what useless horrours? May we not apprehend
that the insects, the worms which are formed from the human frame, may
partake of and retain human consciousness? May we not imagine those
wretched reptiles, which creep from our remains, to be sensible of their
fallen state, and tortured by their degradation? to resent, as well as
seek to elude the ill usage, the blows, the oppressions to which they
are exposed?--'
'Fie! Albert, fie!'
'Nay, what proof, if for proof you wait, have you to the contrary? Is it
their writhing? their sensitive shrink from your touch? their agonizing
efforts to save their miserable existence from your gripe?'
'Harleigh! Harleigh!'
'And this dust, Elinor, to which you settle that, finally, all will be
mouldered or crumbled;--fear you not that its every particle may
possess some sensitive quality? When we cease to speak, to move, to
breathe, you assert the soul to be annihilated: But why? Is it only
because you lose sight of its operations? In chemistry are there not
sundry substances which, by certain processes, become invisible, and are
sought in vain by the spectator; but which, by other processes, are
again brought to view? And shall the chemist have this faculty to
produce, and to withdraw, from our sight, and the Creator of All be
denied any occult powers?'
'Nay, Albert, "how can we reason but from what we know?"--Will you
compare a fact which experiment can prove, which reason may discuss, and
which the senses may witness, with a bare possibility? A vague
conjecture?'
'Is nothing, then, credible, Elinor, that is out of the
province of demonstration? nothing probable, that surpasses our
understanding?--nothing sacred that is beyond our view? Are we so
perfect in our knowledge, even of what we behold, or possess, as to draw
such presumptuous conclusions, of the self-sufficiency and omnipotence
of our faculties, for judging what is every way out of our sight, or
reach? Do we know one radical point of our existence, here, where "we
live, and move, and have our being?" Do we comprehend, unequivocally,
our immediate attributes and powers? Can we tell even how our hands obey
our will? how our desires suffice to guide our feet from place to place?
to roll our eyes from object to object? If all were clear, save the
existence and the extinction of the soul, then, indeed, we might
pronounce all faith, but in self-evidence, to be folly!'
'Faith! Harleigh, faith? the very word scents of monkish subtleties!
'Tis to faith, to that absurd idea of lulling to sleep our reason, of
setting aside our senses, our observation, our knowledge; and giving our
ignorant, unmeaning trust, and blind confidence to religious quacks;
'tis to that, precisely that, you owe what you term our infidelity; for
'tis that which has provoked the spirit of investigation, which has
shewn us the pusillanimity and imbecility of consigning the short period
in which we possess our poor fleeting existence, to other men's uses,
deliberations, schemes, fancies, and ordinances. For what else can you
call submission to unproved assertions, and concurrence in unfounded
belief?'
'And yet, this faith, Elinor, which, in religion, you renounce, despise,
or defy, because in religion you would think, feel, and believe by
demonstration alone, you insensibly admit in nearly all things else!
Have you it not in morals? Does society exist but by faith? Does
friendship,--I will not name what is so open to controversy as
love,--but say! has friendship any other tie? has honour any other bond
than faith? We have no proofs, no demonstrations of worth that can reach
the regions of the heart: we judge but by effects; we believe but by
analogies; we love, we esteem, we trust but by credulity, by faith! For
where is the mathematician who can calculate what may be pronounced of
the mind, from what is seen in the countenance, or uttered by speech?
yet is any one therefore so wretched, as not to feel any social reliance
beyond what he can mathematically demonstrate to be merited?'
'And to what but that, Albert, precisely that, do we owe being so
perpetually duped and betrayed? to what but building upon false trust?
upon appearance, and not certainty?'
'Certainty, Elinor! Where, and in what is certainty to be found? If you
disclaim belief in immortality upon faith, as insufficient to satisfy
reason, what is the basis even of your disbelief? Is it not faith also?
When you demand the proofs of immortality, let me demand, in return,
what are your proofs of materialism? And, till you can bring to
demonstration the operations of the soul while we live, presume not to
decide upon its extinction when we die! Of the corporeal machine, on the
contrary, speak at pleasure; you have before you all your documents for
ratiocination and decision; but, life once over,--when you have placed
the limbs, closed the eyes, arranged the form,--can you arrange the
mind?--the soul?'
'Excite no doubts in me, Harleigh!--my creed is fixed.'
'When sleep overtakes us,' he continued, 'and all, to the beholder,
looks the picture of death, save that the breath still heaves the
bosom;--what is it that guards entire, uninjured, the mind? the
faculties? It is not our consciousness,--we have none! Where is the soul
in that period? Gone it is not, for we are sensible to all that had
preceded its suspension, the moment that we awake. Yet, in that state of
periodical insensibility, what, but experience, could make those who
view us believe that we could ever rise, speak, move, or think again?
How inert is the body! How helpless, how useless, how incapable? Do we
see who is near us? Do we hear who addresses us? Do we know when the
most frightful crimes are committed by our sides? What, I demand, is our
consciousness? We have not the most distant of any thing that passes
around us: yet we open our eyes--and all is known, all is familiar
again. We hear, we see, we feel, we understand!'
'Yes; but in that sleep, Harleigh, that mere mechanical repose of the
animal, we still breathe; we are capable, therefore, of being restored
to all our sensibilities, by a single touch, by a single start; 'tis but
a separation that parts us from ourselves, as absence parts us from our
friends. We yet live,--we yet, therefore, may meet again.'
'And why, when we live no longer, may we not also, Elinor, meet again?'
'Why?--Do you ask why?--Look round the old church-yards! See you not
there the dispersion of our poor mouldered beings? Is not every bone the
prey,--or the disgust,--of every animal? How, when scattered, commixed,
broken, battered, how shall they ever again be collected, united,
arranged, covered and coloured so as to appear regenerated?'
'But what, Elinor, is the fragility, or the dispersion of the body, to
the solidity and the durability of the soul? Why are we to decide, that
to see ourselves again, and again to view each other, such as we seem
here, substance, or what we understand by it, is essential to our
re-union hereafter? Do we not meet, act, talk, move, think with one
another in our dreams? What is it which, then, embodies our ideas? which
gives to our sight, in perfect form and likeness, those with whom we
converse? which makes us conceive that we move, act, speak, and look,
ourselves, with the same gesture, mien, and voice as when awake?'
'Dreams? pho!--they are but the nocturnal vagaries of the imagination.'
'And what, Elinor, is imagination? You will not call it a part of your
body?'
'No; but the blood which still circulates in our veins, Harleigh, gives
imagination its power.'
'But does the blood circulate in the veins of our parents, of our
friends? of our acquaintances? and of strangers whom we equally meet?
yet we see them all; we converse with them all; we utter opinions; we
listen to their answers. And how ably we sometimes argue! how
characteristically those with whom we dispute reply! yet we do not
imagine we guide them. We wait their opinions and decisions, in the same
uncertainty and suspense, that we await them in our waking intercourse.
We have the same fears of ill fortune; the same horrour of ill usage;
the same ardour for success; the same feelings of sorrow, of joy, of
hope, or of remorse, that animate or that torture us, in our daily
occurrences. What new countries we visit! what strange sights we see!
what delight, what anguish, what alarms, what pleasures, and what pains
we experience! Yet in all this variety of incident, conversation,
motion, feeling,--we seem, to those who look at us, but unintelligent
and senseless, though still breathing clay.'
'Ay; but after all those scenes, we awake, Albert, we awake! But when do
we awake from death? Death, the same experience tells us, is sleep
eternal!'
'But in that sleep, also, are there no dreams? Are you sure of that? If,
in our common sleep, there still subsists an active principle, that
feels, speaks, invents, and only by awaking finds that the mind alone,
and not the body has been working;--how are you so sure that no such
active principle subsists in that sleep which you call eternal? Who has
told you what passes where experience is at an end? Who has talked to
you of "that bourne whence no traveller returns?" With the cessation,
indeed, of warmth; with the stillness of those pulses which beat from
circulating blood, all seems to end; but seems it not also to end when
we fall into apoplexies? when we faint away? when we appear to be
drowned? or when, by any means, life is casually suspended? Yet when
those arts, that skill, of which even the success teaches not the
principle, even the process discovers not the secret resources, draw
back, by means intelligible and visible, but through causes indefinable,
the fleeting breath to its corporeal habitation; animation instantly
returns, and the soul, with all its powers, revives!'
'Ay, there, there, Albert, is the very point! If the soul were distinct
from the body, why should not those who are recovered from drowning,
suffocation, or other apparent death, be able to give some account of
what passed in those periods when they seemed to be no more? And who has
done it? No one, Harleigh! not a single renovated being, has explained
away the doubts to which those suspensions of animation give rise.'
'And has any one explained, Elinor, why, though sometimes we have such
wonders to relate of the scenes in which we have borne a part in our
dreams,--we open our eyes, at other times, with no consciousness
whatever, that we have, any way existed from the moment of closing them?
The wants of refreshment and recruit of our corporeal machine, we all
feel, and know; those of that part which is intellectual,--who is able
to calculate? What, except the powers, can be more distinct than the
exercises of the mind and of the body? Yet, though we see not the
workings of what is intellectual; though they are known only by their
effects,--does the student by the midnight oil require less rest from
his mental fatigues,--whether he take it or not,--than the ploughman
from his corporal labour? Is he not as wearied, as exhausted, after a
day consigned to serious and unremitting study and reflection, as the
labourer who has spent it in digging, paving, hewing, and sawing? Yet
his body has been perfectly at peace; has not moved, has not made the
smallest exertion.'
'And why, Harleigh? What is that, but because--'
'Hasten not, Elinor, thence, to your favourite conclusion, that soul and
body, if wearied or rested together, are, therefore, one and the same
thing: observation, and reflection, turned to other points of view, will
shew you fresh reasons, and objects, every day, to disprove that
identity: shew you, on one side, corporal force for supporting the
bitterest grief of heart, with uninjured health; and, mental force, on
the other side, for bearing the acutest bodily disorders with unimpaired
intellectual vigour. How often do the most fragile machines, enwrap the
stoutest minds? how often do the halest frames, encircle the feeblest
intellects? All proves that the connexion between mind and body, however
intimate, is not blended;--though where its limits begin, or where they
end,--who can tell? But, who, also I repeat, can explain the phenomenon,
by which, in the dead of the night, when we are completely insulated,
and left in utter darkness, we firmly believe, nay, feel ourselves shone
upon by the broad beams of day; and surrounded by society, with which we
act, think, and reciprocate ideas?'
'Dreams, I must own, Albert, are strangely incomprehensible. How bodies
can seem to appear, and voices to be heard, where all around is empty
space, it is not easy to conceive!'
'Let this insolvable, and acknowledged difficulty, then, Elinor, in a
circumstance which, though daily recurring, remains inexplicable, check
any hardy decision of the cause why, after certain suspensions, the soul
may resume its functions to our evident knowledge; yet why we can
neither ascertain its departure, its continuance, nor its return, after
others. Oh Elinor! mock not, but revere the impenetrable mystery of
eternity! Ignorance is here our lot; presumption is our most useless
infirmity. The mind and body after death must either be separate, or
together. If together, as you assert, there is no proof attainable, that
the soul partakes not of all the changes, all the dispersions, all the
sufferings, and all the poor enjoyments, of what to us seems the
lifeless, but which, in that case, is only the speechless carcase: if
separate, as I believe,--whither goest thou, Oh soul! to what regions of
bliss?--or what abysses of woe?'
'Harleigh, you electrify me! you convulse the whole train of my
principles, my systems, my long cherished conviction!'
'Say, rather, Elinor, of your faith!--your faith in infidelity! Oh
Elinor! why call you not, rather, upon faith to aid your belief? Faith,
and revealed religion! The limited state of our positive perceptions,
grants us no means for comparison, for judgment, or even for thought,
but by analogy: ask yourself, then, Elinor,--What is there, even in
immortality, more difficult of comprehension, than that indescribable
daily occurrence, which all mankind equally, though unreflecting
experience, of a total suspension of every species of living knowledge,
of every faculty, of every sense,--called sleep? A suspension as big
with matter for speculation and wonder, though its cessation is visible
to us, as that last sleep, of which we view not the period.'
'Albert!--should you shake my creed,--shall I be better contented? or
but yet more wretched?'
'Can Elinor think,--yet ask such a question? Can a prospect of a future
state fail to offer a possibility of future happiness? Why wilfully
reject a consolation that you have no means to disprove? What know you
of this soul which you settle to be so easily annihilated? By what
criterion do you judge it? You have none! save a general consciousness,
that a something there is within us that mocks all search, yet that
always is uppermost; that anticipates good or evil; that outruns all
events; that feels the blow ere the flesh is touched; that expects the
sound before the ear receives it; that, unseen, untraced, unknown,
pervades, rules, animates all! that harbours thoughts, feelings, designs
which no human force can controul; which no mortal, unaided by our own
will, can discover; and which no aid whatever, either of our own or of
others, can bring forward to any possible manifestation!'
'Alas, Harleigh! You shew me nonentity itself to be as doubtful as
immortality! Of what wretched stuff are we composed! Which way must I
now turn,--
'Lost and bewildered in my fruitless search,'[13]--
which way must I turn to develop truth? to comprehend my own existence!
Oh Albert!--you almost make me wish to rest my perturbed mind where
fools alone, I thought, found rest, or hypocrites have seemed to find
it,--on Religion!'
[Footnote 13: Addison.]
'The feeling mind, dear Elinor, has no other serious serenity; no other
hold from the black, cheerless, petrifying expectation of nullity. If,
then, even a wish of light break through your dark despondence, read,
study the Evangelists!--and truth will blaze upon you, with the means to
find consolation.'
'Albert, I know now where I am!--You open to me possibilities that
overwhelm me! My head seems bursting with fulness of struggling ideas!'
'Give them, Elinor, fair play, and they will soon, in return, give you
tranquillity. Reflect only,--that that quality, that faculty, be its
nature, its durability, and its purpose what they may, which the world
at large agrees to call soul, has its universal comprehension from a
something that is felt; not that is proved! Yet who, and where is the
Atheist, the Deist, the Infidel of any description, gifted with the
means to demonstrate, that, in quitting the body with the parting
breath, it is necessarily extinct? that it may not, on the contrary,
still BE, when speech and motion are no more? when our flesh is mingled
with the dust, and our bones are dispersed by the winds? and BE, as
while we yet exist, no part of our body, no single of our senses; never,
while we seem to live, visible, yet never, when we seem to die,
perishable? May it not, when, with its last sigh, it leaves the body,
mingle with that vast expanse of air, which no instrument can completely
analyse, and which our imperfect sight views but as empty space? May it
not mount to upper regions, and enjoy purified bliss? May not all air be
peopled with our departed friends, hovering around us, as sensible as we
are unconscious? May not the uncumbered soul watch over those it loves?
find again those it had lost? be received in the Heaven of Heavens,
where it is destined,--not, Oh wretched idea!--to eternal sleep,
inertness, annihilating dust;--but to life, to joy, to sweetest
reminiscence, to tenderest re-unions, to grateful adoration to
intelligence never ending! Oh! Elinor! keep for ever in mind, that if no
mortal is gifted to prove that this is true,--neither is any one
empowered to prove that it is false!'
'Oh delicious idea!' cried Elinor, rising: 'Oh image of perfection! Oh
Albert! conquering Albert! I hope,--I hope;--my soul may be
immortal!--Pray for me, Albert! Pray that I may dare offer up prayers
for myself!--Send me your Christian divine to guide me on my way; and
may your own heaven bless you, peerless Albert! for ever!--Adieu! adieu!
adieu!'--
Fervently, then, clasping her hands, she sunk, with overpowering
feelings, upon her knees.
Juliet came forward to support her; and Harleigh, deeply gratified,
though full of commiseration, eagerly undertook the commission; and,
echoing back her blessing, without daring to utter a word to Juliet,
slowly quitted the spot.