impress and sign manual upon the hearts of after generations?  Jew, Heathen, or Christian; men of the most opposite creeds and aims; whether it be Moses or Socrates, Isaiah or Epictetus, Augustine or Mohammed, Dante or Bernard, Shakspeare or Bacon, or Goethe’s self, no doubt, though in his tremendous pride he would not confess it even to himself,—­each and all of them have this one fact in common—­that once in their lives, at least, they have gone down into the bottomless pit, and “stato all’ inferno”—­as the children used truly to say of Dante; and there, out of the utter darkness, have asked the question of all questions—­“Is there a God?  And if there be, what is he doing with me?”

What refuge then in self-education; when a man feels himself powerless in the gripe of some unseen and inevitable power, and knows not whether it be chance, or necessity, or a devouring fiend?  To wrap himself sternly in himself, and cry, “I will endure, though all the universe be against me;”—­how fine it sounds!—­But who has done it?  Could a man do it perfectly but for one moment,—­could he absolutely and utterly for one moment isolate himself, and accept his own isolation as a fact, he were then and there a madman or a suicide.  As it is, his nature, happily too weak for that desperate self-assertion, falls back recklessly on some form, more or less graceful according to the temperament, of the ancient panacea, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”  Why should a man educate self, when he knows not whither he goes, what will befall him to-night?  No.  There is but one escape, one chink through which we may see light; one rock on which our feet may find standing-place, even in the abyss:  and that is the belief, intuitive, inspired, due neither to reasoning nor to study, that the billows are God’s billows; and that though we go down to hell, He is there also;—­ the belief that not we, but He, is educating us; that these seemingly fantastic and incoherent miseries, storm following earthquake, and earthquake fire, as if the caprice of all the demons were let loose against us, have in His Mind a spiritual coherence, an organic unity and purpose (though we see it not); that sorrows do not come singly, only because He is making short work with our spirits; and because the more effect He sees produced by one blow, the more swiftly He follows it up by another; till, in one great and varied crisis, seemingly long to us, but short enough compared with immortality, our spirits may be—­

  “Heated hot with burning fears,
  And bathed in baths of hissing tears,
  And battered with the strokes of doom,
  To shape and use.”

And thus, perhaps, it was with poor Grace Harvey.  At least, happily for her, she began after a while to think that it was so.  Only after a while, though.  There was at first a phase of repining, of doubt, almost of indignation against high heaven.  Who shall judge her?  What blame if the crucified one writhe when the first nail is driven?  What blame if the stoutest turn sick and giddy at the first home-thrust of that sword which pierces the joints and marrow, and lays bare to self the secrets of the heart?  God gives poor souls time to recover their breaths, ere He strikes again; and if He be not angry, why should we condemn?