He had often thought, he said, of writing to console her under this deep and wholly unlooked-for trial, but hitherto he had abstained from doing so, lest, while his own anguish and hers were fresh, he should only renew the pain of the wound by his unskilful treatment.  He waited, therefore till time had laid its healing hand upon her sorrows, especially because he found no precedent for one in his position condoling with others when he himself seemed more in need of consolation, and because something new and admirable would be required of a man who, as it were, raised his head from the funeral pyre to console his friends.  Still he now feels impelled to write to her, because to alleviate her regrets will be to lay aside his own.  He does not attempt to conceal from her the magnitude of the misfortune, because so far from being a mere novice in sorrow, she has tasted it from her earliest years in all its varieties; and because his purpose was to conquer her grief, not to extenuate its causes.  Those many miseries would indeed have been in vain, if they had not taught her how to bear wretchedness.  He will prove to her therefore that she has no cause to grieve either on his account, or on her own.  Not on his—­because he is happy among circumstances which others would think miserable and because he assures her with his own lips that not only is he not miserable, but that he can never be made so.  Every one can secure his own happiness, if he learns to seek it, not in external circumstances, but in himself.  He cannot indeed claim for himself the title of wise, for, if so, he would be the most fortunate of men, and near to God Himself; but, which is the next best thing, he has devoted himself to the study of wise men, and from them he has learnt to expect nothing and to be prepared for all things.  The blessings which Fortune had hitherto bestowed on him,—­wealth, honours, glory,—­he had placed in such a position that she might rob him of them all without disturbing him.  There was a great space between them and himself, so that they could be taken but not torn away.  Undazzled by the glamour of prosperity, he was unshaken by the blow of adversity.  In circumstances which were the envy of all men he had never seen any real or solid blessing, but rather a painted emptiness, a gilded deception; and similarly he found nothing really hard or terrible in ills which the common voice has so described.

What, for instance, was exile? it was but a change of place, an absence from one’s native land; and, if you looked at the swarming multitudes in Rome itself, you would find that the majority of them were practically in contented and willing exile, drawn thither by necessity, by ambition, or by the search for the best opportunities of vice.  No isle so wretched and so bleak which did not attract some voluntary sojourners; even this precipitous and naked rock of Corsica, the hungriest, roughest, most savage, most unhealthy spot conceivable, had more foreigners in