“This is a sad deed to which you would lead me, dearest friend, and your woe must indeed be deep that could fill you with these unhappy thoughts.  You long for death and yet you fear it and wish me to be your companion.  But I have less courage than you and even thus accompanied I dare not die.  Listen to me, and then reflect if you ought to win me to your project, even if with the over-bearing eloquence of despair you could make black death so inviting that the fair heaven should appear darkness.  Listen I entreat you to the words of one who has himself nurtured desperate thoughts, and longed with impatient desire for death, but who has at length trampled the phantom under foot, and crushed his sting.  Come, as you have played Despair with me I will play the part of Una with you and bring you hurtless from his dark cavern.  Listen to me, and let yourself be softened by words in which no selfish passion lingers.

“We know not what all this wide world means; its strange mixture of good and evil.  But we have been placed here and bid live and hope.  I know not what we are to hope; but there is some good beyond us that we must seek; and that is our earthly task.  If misfortune come against us we must fight with her; we must cast her aside, and still go on to find out that which it is our nature to desire.  Whether this prospect of future good be the preparation for another existence I know not; or whether that it is merely that we, as workmen in God’s vineyard, must lend a hand to smooth the way for our posterity.  If it indeed be that; if the efforts of the virtuous now, are to make the future inhabitants of this fair world more happy; if the labours of those who cast aside selfishness, and try to know the truth of things, are to free the men of ages, now far distant but which will one day come, from the burthen under which those who now live groan, and like you weep bitterly; if they free them but from one of what are now the necessary evils of life, truly I will not fail but will with my whole soul aid the work.  From my youth I have said, I will be virtuous; I will dedicate my life for the good of others; I will do my best to extirpate evil and if the spirit who protects ill should so influence circumstances that I should suffer through my endeavour, yet while there is hope and hope there ever must be, of success, cheerfully do I gird myself to my task.

“I have powers; my countrymen think well of them.  Do you think I sow my seed in the barren air, & have no end in what I do?  Believe me, I will never desert life untill this last hope is torn from my bosom, that in some way my labours may form a link in the chain of gold with which we ought all to strive to drag Happiness from where she sits enthroned above the clouds, now far beyond our reach, to inhabit the earth with us.  Let us suppose that Socrates, or Shakespear, or Rousseau had been seized with despair and died in youth when they were as young as I am; do you think that we and all the world should not