There is much to be learned from this humble life, and yet were it perhaps not well to hold it forth as an example to such as already incline overmuch to resignation, for these it might mislead.  It is a life that would seem to have been wholly passive—­and to be passive is not good for all.  She died a virgin in her twenty-ninth year:  and it is sad to die a virgin.  Is it not the paramount duty of every human being to offer to his destiny all that can be offered to the destiny of man?  And indeed we had far better leave behind us work unfinished than life itself incomplete.  It is good to be indifferent to vain or idle pleasures; but we have no right almost voluntarily to neglect the most important chances of indispensable happiness.  The soul that is unhappy may have within it cause for noble regret.  To look largely on the sadness of one’s life is to make essay, in the darkness, of the wings that shall one day enable us to soar high above this sadness.  Effort was lacking, perhaps, in Emily Bronte’s life. (In her soul there was wealth of passion and freedom and daring, but in her life timidity, silence, inertness, conventions, and prejudice; the very things that in thought she despised.) This is the history often of the too-meditative soul.  But it is difficult to pass judgment on an entire existence; and here there were much to be said of the devotion wherewith she sacrificed the best years of her youth to an undeserving, though unfortunate, brother.  Our remarks then, in a case such as this, must be understood generally only; but still, how long and how narrow is the path that leads from the soul to life!  Our thoughts of love, of justice and loyalty, our thoughts of bold ambition—­what are all these but acorns that fall from the oak in the forest? and must not thousands and tens of thousands be lost and rot in the lichen ere a single tree spring to life?  “She had a beautiful soul,” said, speaking of another woman, the woman whose words I quoted above, “a wide intellect, and tender heart, but ere these qualities could issue forth into life they had perforce to traverse a straitened character.  Again and again have I wondered at this want of self-knowledge, of return to self.  The man who would wish us to see the deepest recess of his life will begin by telling us all that he thinks and he feels, will lead as to his point of view; we are conscious, perhaps, of much elevation of soul; then, as we enter with him still further into his life, he tells of his conduct, his joys and his sorrows; and in these we detect not a gleam of the soul that had shone through his thoughts and desires.  When the trumpet is sounded for action, the instincts rush in, the character hastens between; but the soul stands aloof:  the soul, which is man’s very highest, being like the princess who elects to live on in arrogant penury rather than soil her hands with ordinary labour.”  Yes, alas, all is useless till such time as we have learned to harden our hands; to transform the gold and silver