the remainder of life to the memory of the departed,
and would regard with sincere horror the suggestion
that it was possible they should ever marry again;
but after a while they do. And you will even
find men, beyond middle age, who made a tremendous
work at their first wife’s death, and wore very
conspicuous mourning, who in a very few months may
be seen dangling after some new fancy, and who in the
prospect of their second marriage evince an exhilaration
that approaches to crackiness. It is usual to
speak of such things in a ludicrous manner; but I
confess the matter seems to me anything but one to
laugh at. I think that the rapid dying out of
warm feelings, the rapid change of fixed resolutions,
is one of the most sorrowful subjects of reflection
which it is possible to suggest. Ah, my friends,
after we die, it would not be expedient, even if it
were possible, to come back. Many of us would
not like to find how very little they miss us.
But still, it is the manifest intention of the Creator
that strong feelings should be transitory. The
sorrowful thing is when they pass and leave absolutely
no trace behind them. There should always he some
corner kept in the heart for a feeling which once
possessed it all. Let us look at the case temperately.
Let us face and admit the facts. The healthy body
and mind can get over a great deal; but there are some
things which it is not to the credit of our nature
should ever be entirely got over. Here are sober
truth, and sound philosophy, and sincere feeling together,
in the words of Philip van Artevelde:—
“Well, well, she’s gone,
And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain
and grief
Are transitory things, no less than joy;
And though they leave us not the men we
were,
Yet they do leave us. You behold
me here,
A man bereaved, with something of a blight
Upon the early blossoms of his life,
And its first verdure,—having
not the less
A living root, and drawing from the earth
Its vital juices, from the air its powers:
And surely as man’s heart and strength
are whole,
His appetites regerminate, his heart
Reopens, and his objects and desires
Spring up renewed.”
But though Artevelde speaks truly and well, you remember
how Mr. Taylor, in that noble play, works out to our
view the sad sight of the deterioration of character,
the growing coarseness and harshness, the lessening
tenderness and kindliness, which are apt to come with
advancing years. Great trials, we know, passing
over us, may influence us either for the worse or
the better; and unless our nature is a very obdurate
and poor one, though they may leave us, they will not
leave us the men we were. Once, at a public meeting,
I heard a man in eminent station make a speech.
I had never seen him before; but I remembered an inscription
which I had read, in a certain churchyard far away,
upon the stone that marked the resting-place of his
young wife, who had died many years before. I