104.  Go where we will, the plentiful river of life flows on, beneath the canopy of heaven.  It flows between prison walls, where the sun never gleams on its waters; as it flows by the palace steps, where all is gladness and glory.  Not our concern the depth of this river, or its width, or the strength of its current, as it streams on for ever, pertaining to all; but of deepest importance to us is the size and the purity of the cup that we plunge in its waters.  For whatever of life we absorb must needs take the form of this cup, as this, too, has taken the form of our thoughts and our feelings; being modelled, indeed, on the breast of our intimate destiny as the breast of a goddess once served for the cup of the sculptor of old.  Every man has the cup of his fashioning, and most often the cup he has learned to desire.  When we murmur at fate, let our grievance be only that she grafted not in our heart the wish for, or thought of, a cup more ample and perfect.  For indeed in the wish alone does inequality lie, but this inequality vanishes the moment it has been perceived.  Does the thought that our wish might be nobler not at once bring nobility with it; does not the breast of our destiny throb to this new aspiration, thereby expanding the docile cup of the ideal—­the cup whose metal is pliable, still to the cold stern hour of death?  No cause for complaint has he who has learned that his feelings are lacking in generous ardour, or the other who nurses within him a hope for a little more happiness, a little more beauty, a little more justice.  For here all things come to pass in the way that they tell us it happens with the felicity of the elect, of whom each one is robed in gladness, and wears the garment befitting his stature.  Nor can he desire a happiness more perfect than the happiness which he possesses, without the desire wherewith he desired at once bringing fulfilment with it.  If I envy with noble envy the happiness of those who are able to plunge a heavier cup, and more radiant than mine, there where the great river is brightest, I have, though I know it not, my excellent share of all that they draw from the river, and my lips repose by the side of their lips on the rim of the shining cup.

105.  It may be remembered perhaps that, before these digressions, we spoke of a woman whose friend asked her, wonderingly, “Can any man be worthy of your love?” The same question might have been asked of Emily Bronte, as indeed of many others; and in this world there are thousands of souls, of loftiest intention, that do yet forfeit the best years of love in constant self-interrogation as to the future of their affections.  Nay, more—­in the empire of destiny it is to the image of love that the great mass of complaints and regrets come flocking; the image of love around which hover sluggish desire, extravagant hope, and fears engendered of vanity.  At root of all this is much pride, and counterfeit poetry, and falsehood.  The soul that is misunderstood