’Some remarks which I made last night trouble me, and I cannot fix my attention upon other things till I have qualified them.  I suffered myself to speak in too unmeasured terms, and my expressions were fitted to bring into discredit the religious instruction which has been given me, or which I have sought.

’I do not think “all men are born for the purpose of unfolding beautiful ideas;” for the vocation of many is evidently the culture of affections by deeds of kindness.  But I do think that the vocations of men and women differ, and that those who are forced to act out of their sphere are shorn of inward and outward brightness.

’For myself, I wish to say, that, if I am in a mood of darkness and despondency, I nevertheless consider such a mood unworthy of a Christian, or indeed of any one who believes in the immortality of the soul.  No one, who had steady faith in this and in the goodness of God, could be otherwise than cheerful.  I reverence the serenity of a truly religious mind so much, that I think, if I live, I may some time attain to it.

’Although I do not believe in a Special Providence regulating outward events, and could not reconcile such a belief with what I have seen of life, I do not the less believe in the paternal government of a Deity.  That He should visit the souls of those who seek Him seems to me the nobler way to conceive of his influence.  And if there were not some error in my way of seeking, I do not believe I should suffer from languor or deadness on spiritual subjects, at the time when I have most need to feel myself at home there.  To find this error is my earnest wish; and perhaps I am now travelling to that end, though by a thorny road.  It is a mortification to find so much yet to do; for at one time the scheme of things seemed so clear, that, with Cromwell, I might say, “I was once in grace.”  With my mind I prize high objects as much as then:  it is my heart which is cold.  And sometimes I fear that the necessity of urging them on those under my care dulls my sense of their beauty.  It is so hard to prevent one’s feelings from evaporating in words.’

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’"The faint sickness of a wounded heart.”  How frequently do these words of Beckford recur to my mind!  His prayer, imperfect as it is, says more to me than many a purer aspiration.  It breathes such an experience of impassioned anguish.  He had everything,—­health, personal advantages, almost boundless wealth, genius, exquisite taste, culture; he could, in some way, express his whole being.  Yet well-nigh he sank beneath the sickness of the wounded heart; and solitude, “country of the unhappy,” was all he craved at last.

’Goethe, too, says he has known, in all his active, wise, and honored life, no four weeks of happiness.  This teaches me on the other side; for, like Goethe, I have never given way