men.  It may be that her beauty, her force and her instinct for good, will be buried within her:  in her heart and the hearts of the few who are near.  And even then, and if this be so, the soul of this woman doubtless shall find its own thing to do.  The mighty gates through which we must pass to a helpful and noteworthy life no longer grate on their hinges with the deafening clamour of old.  They are smaller, perhaps, than they were; less vast and imposing; but their number is greater to-day, and they admit us, in silence, to paths that extend very far.  And even though the home of this woman be not brightened by one single gleam from without, will she have failed to fulfil her destiny because her life is lived in the shade?  Cannot destiny be beautiful and complete in itself, without help from without?  As the soul that has truly conquered surveys the triumphs of the past, it is glad of those only that brought with them a deeper knowledge of life and a nobler humility; of those that lent sweeter charm to the moments when love, glory, and enthusiasm having faded away, the fruit that a few hours of boiling passion had ripened was gathered in meditation and silence.  When the feasting is over:  when charity, kindness and valorous deed all lie far behind us:  what is there left to the soul but some stray recollections, a gain of some consciousness, and a feeling that helps us to look on our place in the world with more knowledge and less apprehension—­a feeling blent with some wisdom, from the numberless things it has learned?  When the hour for rest has sounded—­as it must sound every night and at every moment of solitude—­when the gaudy vestments of love, and glory, and power fall helplessly round us; what is it we can take with us as we seek refuge within ourselves, where the happiness of each day is measured by the knowledge the day has brought us, by the thoughts and the confidence it has helped us to acquire?  Is our true destiny to be found in the things which take place about us, or in that which abides in our soul?” Be a man’s power or glory never so great,” said a philosopher, “his soul soon learns how to value the feelings that spring from external events; and as he perceives that no increase has come to his physical faculties, that these remain wholly unchanged, neither altered nor added to, then does the sense of his nothingness burst full upon him.  The king who should govern the world must still, like the rest of his brothers, revolve in a limited circle, whose every law must be obeyed; and on his impressions and thoughts must his happiness wholly depend.”  The impressions his memory retains, we might add, because they have chastened his mind; for the souls that we deal with here will retain such impressions only as have quickened their sense of goodness, as have made them a little more noble.  Is it impossible to find—­it matters not where, nor how great be the silence—­the same undlssolvable matter that lurks in the cup of the noblest external existence? and seeing that nothing