In secula seculorum!  Amen!

CHAPTER II.  CURFEW BELLS.

Welcome Disappointment!  Thy hand is cold and hard, but it is the hand of a friend!  Thy voice is stern and harsh, but it is the voice of a friend!  O, there is something sublime in calm endurance, something sublime in the resolute, fixed purpose of suffering without complaining, which makes disappointment oftentimes better than success!

The emperor Isaac Angelus made a treaty with Saladin, and tried to purchase the Holy Sepulchre with gold.  Richard Lion-heart scorned such alliance, and sought to recover it by battle.  Thus do weak minds make treaties with the passions they cannot overcome, and try to purchase happiness at the expense of principle.  But the resolute will of a strong man scorns such means; and struggles nobly with his foe, to achieve great deeds.  Therefore, whosoever thou art that sufferest, try not to dissipate thy sorrow by the breath of the world, nor drown its voice in thoughtless merriment.  It is a treacherous peace that is purchased by indulgence.  Rather take this sorrow to thy heart, and make it a part of thee, and it shall nourish thee till thou art strong again.

The shadows of the mind are like those of the body.  In the morning of life they all lie behind us; at noon, we trample them under foot; and in the evening they stretch long, broad, and deepening before us.  Are not, then, the sorrows of childhood as dark as those of age?  Are not the morning shadows of life as deep and broad as those of its evening?  Yes; but morning shadows soon fade away, while those of evening reach forward into the night and mingle with the coming darkness.  Man is begotten in delight and born in pain; and in these are the rapture and labor of his life fore-shadowed from the beginning.  But thelife of man upon this fair earth is made up for the most part of little pains and little pleasures.  The great wonder-flowers bloom but once in a lifetime.

A week had already elapsed since the events recorded in the last chapter.  Paul Flemming went his way, a melancholy man, “drinking the sweet wormwood of his sorrow.”  He did not rail at Providence and call it fate, but suffered and was silent.  It is a beautiful trait in the lover’s character, that he thinks no evil of the object loved.  What he suffered was no swift storm of feeling, that passes away with a noise, and leaves the heart clearer; but a dark phantom had risen up in the clear night, and, like that of Adamastor, hid the stars; and if it ever vanished away for a season, still the deep sound of the moaning main would be heard afar, through many a dark and lonely hour.  And thus he journeyed on, wrapped in desponding gloom, and mainly heedless of all things around him.  His mind was distempered.  That one face was always before him; that one voice forever saying;

“You are not the Magician.”

Painful, indeed, it is to be misunderstood and undervalued by those we love.  But this, too, in our life, must we learn to bear without a murmur; for it is a tale often repeated.