Now it is different:  I can smile yet, but my smile is in pity, rather than in mockery.  If suffering has subdued my mind to seriousness, and perhaps enfeebled its powers, I may at least hope that it has not soured or imbittered my temper:—­if what could once amuse, no longer amuses,—­what could once provoke has no longer power to irritate:  thus my loss may be improved into a gain—­car tout est bien, quand tout est mal.

It is sorrow which makes our experience; it is sorrow which teaches us to feel properly for ourselves and for others.  We must feel deeply, before we can think rightly.  It is not in the tempest and storm of passions we can reflect,—­but afterwards when the waters have gone over our soul; and like the precious gems and the rich merchandize which the wild wave casts on the shore out of the wreck it has made—­such are the thoughts left by retiring passions.

Reflection is the result of feeling; from that absorbing, heart-rending compassion for oneself (the most painful sensation, almost, of which our nature is capable), springs a deeper sympathy for others; and from the sense of our own weakness, and our own self-upbraiding, arises a disposition to be indulgent—­to forbear—­and to forgive—­so at least it ought to be.  When once we have shed those inexpressibly bitter tears, which fall unregarded, and which we forget to wipe away, O how we shrink from inflicting pain! how we shudder at unkindness!—­and think all harshness even in thought, only another name for cruelty!  These are but common-place truths, I know, which have often been a thousand times better expressed.  Formerly I heard them, read them, and thought I believed them:  now I feel them; and feeling, I utter them as if they were something new.—­Alas! the lessons of sorrow are as old as the world itself.

To-day we have seen nothing new.  In the morning I was ill:  in the afternoon we drove to the Cascina; and while the rest walked, I spread my shawl upon the bank and basked like a lizard in the sunshine.  It was a most lovely day, a summer-day in England.  In this paradise of a country, the common air, and earth, and skies, seem happiness enough.  While I sat to-day, on my green bank—­languid, indeed, but free from pain—­and looked round upon a scene which has lost its novelty, but none of its beauty,—­where Florence, with its glittering domes and its back-ground of sunny hills, terminated my view on one side, and the Apennines, tinted with rose colour and gold, bounded it on the other, I felt not only pleasure, but a deep thankfulness that such pleasures were yet left to me.