Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/143

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LIFE IN THE OLD WORLD.
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neither did I inquire after it. I merely listened and drank in, with my whole soul, these heavenly tones, which ascended, like angelic voices, out of the deep. Eternal harmonies! are there such in the depths of the dark questionings of human life? And do we not hear a promise of the harmonious solution of these,—a promise of your harmonious concord, when we listen to our own soul's deepest anticipations and requirements?

In the far distance across the lake, a voice joddled so freshly, so joyously! Prophetic voices amid the shades of evening, receive my thanks! Let us wait and hope! And having seen the sun rise, it would be pusillanimous not to wait and believe that it will penetrate with its light the shadows of earth—even those cast by the great mountain. Thank God, I can both wait and hope!

I proposed to Penchaud that, during the quiet evenings of our journey, we should read together the ninth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, which has so frequently occasioned me the bitterest anguish, and that he should help me to understand it in connection with the two following. For the right explanation of this lies infallibly in these.

Schwytz, August 29th.—The town Schwytz lies at the foot of the lofty obelisk-like rocks, the Mythen, as quiet, as silent, as if it alone were occupied in collecting its memories. And that it is so, seemed proved by two acquaintances which I made to-day. The first in the morning, when we paid a visit to the Landamman Reding, one of the oldest and noblest families in the Canton. It was now represented by individuals