through long years of uncertain absence, subject to all the casualties of doubt and distance, feeding on long expectation; till, as the Scripture so touchingly says, hope deferred is sickness to the heart: still there is hope, and love has a store of subtle happiness in the many links that memory delights to bind, and whose tender recallings are the dearest guarantee for the future.
It is wretchedness to kneel by the grave of the departed, who have taken with them the verdure from the earth, and the glory from the sky; who have left home and heart alike desolate: but then the soul asserts its diviner portion, looks afar off through the valley of the shadow of tears, and is intensely conscious that here is but its trial, and beyond is its triumph. The love that dwells with the dead has a sanctity in its sorrow; for love, above all things, asserts that we are immortal. But wretchedness takes no form, varied as are its many modes in this our weary existence, like that where the hand is given, and the heart is far away—where the love vowed at the altar is not that which lies
