In the life of every man, there are sudden transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous.  At once, as if some magician had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeedsthe storm.  The causes which produce these sudden changes may have been long at work within us, but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and apparently without sufficient cause.  It was so with Flemming; and from that hour forth he resolved, that he would no longer veer with every shifting wind of circumstance; no longer be a child’s plaything in the hands of Fate, which we ourselves do make or mar.  He resolved henceforward not to lean on others; but to walk self-confident and self-possessed; no longer to waste his years in vain regrets, nor wait the fulfilment of boundless hopes and indiscreet desires; but to live in the Present wisely, alike forgetful of the Past, and careless of what the mysterious Future might bring.  And from that moment he was calm, and strong; he was reconciled with himself!  His thoughts turned to his distant home beyond the sea.  An indescribable, sweet feeling rose within him.

“Thither will I turn my wandering footsteps,” said he; “and be a man among men, and no longer a dreamer among shadows.  Henceforth bemine a life of action and reality!  I will work in my own sphere, nor wish it other than it is.  This alone is health and happiness.  This alone is Life;

’Life that shall send

A challenge to its end,

And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend!’

Why have I not made these sage reflections, this wise resolve, sooner?  Can such a simple result spring only from the long and intricate process of experience?  Alas! it is not till Time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life, to light the fires of passion with, from day to day, that Man begins to see, that the leaves which remain are few in number, and to remember, faintly at first, and then more clearly, that, upon the earlier pages of that book, was written a story of happy innocence, which he would fain read over again.  Then come listless irresolution, and the inevitable inaction of despair; or else the firm resolve to record upon the leaves that still remain, a more noble history, than the child’s story, with which the book began.”

CHAPTER IX.  THE LAST PANG.

“Farewell to thee, Saint Gilgen!” said Flemming, as he turned on the brow of the hill, to take his last look at the lake and the village below, and felt that this was one of the few spots on the wide earth to which he could say farewell with regret.  “Thy majestic hills have impressed themselves upon my soul, as a seal upon wax.  The quiet beauty of thy lake shall be to me forever an image of peace and purity and stillness, and that inscription in thy little churchyard, a sentence of wisdom for my after life.”