382 GEOEGE JOHN KOMANES 1894 



Looking back over these two years of illness, it is 

 impossible not to be struck by the calmness and forti- 

 tude with which that illness was met. There were, 

 as has been said, moments of terrible depression and 

 of disappointment and of grief. It was not easy for 

 him to give up ambition, to leave so many projects 

 unfulfilled, so much work undone. 



But to him this illness grew to be a mount of 

 purification, 



Ove T umano spirito si purga, 

 E di salire al ciel diventa degno. 1 



More and more there grew on him a deepening 

 sense of the goodness of God. No one had ever suf- 

 fered more from the Eclipse of Faith, no one had 

 ever been more honest in dealing with himself and 

 with his difficulties. 



The change that came over his mental attitude 

 may seem almost incredible to those who knew him 

 only as a scientific man ; it does not seem so to the 

 few who knew anything of his inner life. To them 

 the impression given is, not of an enemy changed 

 into a friend, of antagonism altered into submission ; 

 rather is it of one who for long has been bear- 

 ing a heavy burden on his shoulders bravely and 

 patiently, and who at last has had it lifted from 

 him, and lifted so gradually that he could not tell 

 the exact moment when he found it gone, and 

 himself standing, like the Pilgrim of never to be 

 forgotten story, at the foot of the Cross, with Three 

 Shining Ones coming to greet him. 



It was recovery, to some extent discovery, which 

 befell him, but there was no change of purpose, no 

 sudden intellectual or moral conversion. 



1 Dante's Purgatorio, I. 



