THE SMUGGLER. 233 



Far be it from me to encourage weak and morbid sensibilities, 

 or to represent life as a dream of sickly feelings, or a stage for 

 the action of ill-regulated passions; it is a place of duty and 

 of action, of obedience to the rule of the one great guide, of 

 endeavour, and, alas, of trial! But still human beings are not 

 mere machines; there is still something within this frame-work 

 of dust and ashes, besides, and very different from, the bones 

 and muscles, the veins and nerves, of which it is composed ; 

 and Heaven forbid that it should not be so! There are still 

 loves and affections, sympathies and regards, associations and 

 memories, and all the linked sweetness of that strange harmoni- 

 ous whole, where the spirit and the matter, the soul and the 

 body, blended in mysterious union, act on each other, and re- 

 ciprocate, by every sense and every perception, new sources of 

 pain or of delight. The forms and conventionalities of society, 

 the habits of the age in which we live, the force of education, 

 habit, example, may, in very many cases, check the outward 

 show of feeling, and in some, perhaps, wear down to nothing 

 the reality. But still how many a bitter heart-ache lies con- 

 cealed beneath the polished brow and smiling lip; how many 

 a bright aspiration, how many a tender hope, how many a 

 passionate throb, hides itself from the eyes of others, from the 

 foreigners of the heart, under an aspect of gay merriment or of 

 cold indifference. The silver services of the world are all, be- 

 lieve me, but of plated goods, and the brightest ornaments that 

 deck the table or adorn the saloon but of silver gilt. 



Could we, as angels are supposed to do, stand by the bed- 

 side of many a fair girl who has been laughing through an 

 evening of apparent merriment, and look through the fair 

 bosom into the heart beneath, see all the feelings that thrill 

 therein, or trace even the visions that chequer slumber, what 

 should we behold? Alas! how strange a contrast to the 

 beaming looks and gladsome smiles which have marked the 

 course of the day. How often would be seen the bitter repin- 

 ing; the weary sickness of the heart; the calm, stern grief; 

 the desolation ; the despair; forming a black and gloomy back- 

 ground to the bright seeming of the hours of light. How 

 often, in the dream, should we behold " the lost, the loved, 

 the dead: too many, yet how few," rise up before memory in 

 those moments, when not only the shackles and the handcuffs 

 of the mind, imposed by the tyrant uses of society, are cast off, 



