"All this is wonderful blessing falling to me beyond my share,
after I had thought that my life was ended, and that, so to speak,
my coffin was ready for me in the next room. Deep down below there
is a hidden river of sadness, but this must always be with those
who have lived so long; but I am able to enjoy my newly reopened
life. I shall be a better, more loving creature than I could have
been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for the gift
of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all the
possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous
little planet. I was getting hard, and if I had decided differently
I think I should have become selfish.
"The whole history is something like a miracle-legend. But instead
of any former affection being displaced, I seem to have recovered
the loving sympathy that I was in danger of losing. I mean that I
had been conscious of a certain drying-up of tenderness in me, and
that now the spring seems to have risen again."
The consolations of this new love and tenderness were to cheer her but a
little time, for they were scarcely settled in the new home after the
trip abroad, during which time she had excellent health and enjoyed
everything much, before the final illness came, and "the fever called
living was over at last."
Amid the falling of the bitter rain of winter, in the deadliest
desolation of the year, they bore her to her rest amid the silent. She
whose speech has endeared her to the whole thinking world, whose
thoughts have borne us like an anthem ever upward to the loftiest and
the best, all her sacred service done, shall know hereafter no more
work, no more device, but the deep calm of rest, untroubled by the
vexing sights and shows of time.
We cannot think that she met the solemn, swift release with dread. She
looked too deeply into life to make of it a mere thing of daily bread,
of common homely joys and trifling labors; but all its sorest problems
weighed her down, and all its deepest doubt and dull despairing went
with her to the last, saddening even the happiest moments of her life.
And the falling of that cold and solemn winter rain into that grave,
about which gathered many of the greatest minds in England with reverent
tears, seems not sad but sweet,--a kind release from the stress and
strain of a tumultuous existence. Nevermore will that still heart be
crushed and riven by wrongs and woes which she has no power to aid;
nevermore life's terrors hold and o'ermaster her; nevermore a
questioning world look upon her in judgment. With the great of every
time and nation she has at last taken her place, and will hold it
evermore.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]