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June 8, 1850.] SCfftf &«&&£?< 261
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Use your imagination and your charity in...
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EMBITTERING THE SABBATH. The levity of o...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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June 8, 1850.] Scfftf &«&&£?< 261
June 8 , 1850 . ] SCfftf &«&& £ ?< 261
Use Your Imagination And Your Charity In...
Use your imagination and your charity in making complete what I shall only be able to indicate distractedly . " The Step I have taken is irrevocable . When this reaches you I shall no longer be in this world ; but I cannot quit you and it without some justification of my conduct : you , with whom I have been so happy ! you who have made life heaven to me ! you , dearest , dearest Armand 3 whom I have loved , and still love more than ever woman loved before , and whom I quit because I love !
Let me be calm and recal the past . I forsaw that this day would come . I neither blinded myself , nor tried to blind you . Our marriage was a folly . Yet , why do I say that ? My heart tells me such a phrase is false . I do not repent our marriage . No ; although all my previsions have come true , if the time were to come again , again would I accept your hand , again would I barter a whole existence for a few years of such intense , such perfect happiness as I have passed by your dear side !
te Armand , you no longer love me . I say this , not as a reproach . How , dearest , could I reproach you ? 1 state it as a terrible inevitable fact , which forces me to recognise it , and forces me to do what I purpose . You have loved me ; you have made me the happiest of beings . Never once have you given me pain—at least by any voluntary act—for the cessation of affection I know is involuntary . But in return for all that love , all that kindness , and
all that happiness shall I , can I throw upon your future the burden of an unrequited love ? Can I make you miserable ? No . I suffer , but I cannot see you suffering . The paleness of your cheek , the sadness in your smile are reproaches , mute painful reproaches , which I cannot bear . I take upon myself to break a bond which , while it was a bond of affection , was one of exquisite bliss , but which now has become a load of wretchedness . You are free : free to act , to love !
" Think of me kindly—you will do so , for all your thoughts are kind— - and forget the last year or two , and all their wretchedness , to think of me only in that exquisite time when our hearts were one . I wish to occupy a pleasant spot in your memory , to be an image only of delight . O that I had died before that time elapsed ! O that I had died in your loving arms , with your loving eyes bent over me ... Yet no ! Then I should have left you wretched , inconsolable ; now I shall leave you sad , indeed , for I know you will grieve for me , but the sadness will not be eternal : it will soon give place to other healthier feelings .
" Armand , dearest and best , think not I take this step rashly , or in anger , or in bitterness . I have pondered well upon it . The sacrifice was necessary . I have reasoned myself into that belief , would that I could reason you into it ! " I act calmy and from conviction . Do you not see that this is the only issue for me ? Regain your love I cannot ; recal the past I cannot . Why , then , fret you , and make myself miserable by prolonging a false relation ? I have no children who call for my protection and assistance . I have nothing but you in the world , and for you I would sacrifice the world as I would give up a caprice .
" Blessings on your head , beloved of my soul , blessings for the love and kindness you have shown your Hortense ! Remember that what she now does was done to secure your happiness ; you will not frustrate her intention by idle regrets , will you , dearest ? You will be happy , and when sorrow darkens your thoughts , say , Hortense looks down upon me reproachfully because I am making her sacrifice needless . ' Will you promise that ? " The bliss I have enjoyed with you is enough for a life . One who has known your love cannot wish to live without it ! If you have sometimes been happy by my side let the remembrance of those hours be all that you ever think of your poor Hobtense !"
Armand read this letter with a tremor in all his limbs , and an overpowering sickness at heart . On finishing it he stood like one who has just received a death-warrant , the motives of which he cannot comprehend , so absorbed is he with the contemplation of his doom . He did not weep , he did not groan , he did not throw himself sobbing on the bed . Mechanically undressing himself he paused to read and re-read the letter , and strove to collect his scattered energies . He was not stunned ; he was not even pained ; there was a numbness in his mind which prevented the acuteness of pain . He could neither think consecutively nor feel acutely j His thoughts seemed to loiter round one subject as if dreading to fix themselves distinctly upon it .
All that night he lay still , tearless , looking forwards with a blank despair , and wondering sometimes at the triviality of his thoughts in such a condition . He planned nothing , determined nothing , hoped nothing . The dim sense of some dread calamity paralyzed him . That Hortense was dead , and had killed herself for his sake was not keen and distinct in his consciousness j the fact itself was dimly apprehended by him , but it filled the vast chambers of his soul with drear and solemn imagery , which oppressed him as with an
intolerable load . There is a grief too deep for tears , too deep even for feeling ; a grief that seems to freeze the currents of life , and leave nothing but a dull despair to occupy the soul . This was the grief which prostrated Armand . Yet Hortense was not dead . She had not the courage to die . Her plan was equally effectual , for it took her completely from the world she had hitherto lived in , and by making Armand believe he was free it made him free ; the plan was to become a Sister of Charity . And here closes this Second Episode - , here for the present I must pause ,
Use Your Imagination And Your Charity In...
and vacate the columns occupied so many weeks , reserving for a future and not distant day the Initiation of Work which forms the Third Episode of this romance . Meanwhile I open those columns to varieties the reader will be glad to welcome . Among these I may at once announce a new story by Mrs . Crowe , authoress of " Susan Hopley , " " The Story of Lilly Dawson , " « ' The Nightside of Nature , " & c . In this striking story , The Unseen Wit " ness , —underneath its progressive and absorbing interest as a fiction the discerning eye will note a profound and truthful poitraiture of human nature .
Embittering The Sabbath. The Levity Of O...
EMBITTERING THE SABBATH . The levity of our young men is distressing . It speaks—as the Reverend W . Blossop , of Bungay , truly says—of a godless age . That puppy Vivian told me only yesterday that the present holy movement in favour of Better Observance of the Sabbath was a movement by the bigoted and bilious for the Better Embittering of the Sabbath 1 a remark for which I will remember him in my will ! ..-. Did you ever ? The prevention of that unhallowed desecration which has of late become so frightful , and which Rowland Hill—whom the Reverend W . Blossop , of Bungay , thinks is Antichrist—endeavours to agglomerate ( the word is a favourite with dear Mr . Blossop , and , though I am not quite certain as to the sense , I feel the weight and grandeur of its sound ) to agglomerate , I say , that is called embittering the Sabbath ! That an aunt should have her grey
hairs insulted by such language ! ... And what if it be embitteiing the Sabbath ? I am not one who would shrink from that . The Sabbath should be a day of prayer and mortification . We do not mortify ourselves enough ; we are not gloomy enough over the retrospect of our fallen state ; we think too littfe of our sins . One day , at least , we should devote to God ; and how better can we please Him than by the deep recognition of His world being a Vale of Blood and of Tears ? how can we offend Him more than by foolish enjoyment , careless laughter , talk without righteousness , recreation without a purpose , " or labour of any worldly kind ?
My Nephew—I mean Vivian , not the good and pious Josiah—tells me with a taunt that music on the Sunday cannot be sinful because the birds " make the woods musical on that day as well as on other days . " I don ' t know that they do . I never stir into the woods or fields on that day . They may ; but if they do I am sure of one thing—they sing nothing but anthems ! To that I have no objection . I raise up my own voice when dear Mr . Blossop ( of Bungay ) gives out the hymn . ( Mrs . Jones has a cruel voice , though ; it will not keep to one key ; nor can I greatly admire the singing of Mrs . Arrowby Smith which some people talk so much about . )
As to Nature telling us that enjoyment is everywhere in woods and fields , in streams , in the air , in the clouds , and all that , it is nonsense . Don ' t talk to me about cheerfulness being piety . It is no such thing . If the birds and beasts do enjoy themselves on a Sunday—which I doubt—it is because they were not born in sin ! Nor is there any reason in the argument drawn from foreign countries . I hate foreigners—they wear moustachios , and have no powers of conversation in English . Protestant Germany , Sweden , Norway , and all that , may very well enjoy themselves on the Sabbath . Oh , I have no doubt they do ! Not the slightest ! When I think of their morals—how they are all Socialists and
Infidels who beat their wives and never brush their teeth—I see at once that they are just the people to enjoy themselves on the Sabbath . Protestant , indeed ! I should like to hear what the Reverend W . Blossop would say to their Protestantism ! If they do not observe the Sabbath , they can have no religion ; that is the long and the short of it . Look at Scotland—how different The * Scotch are a pious people . They draw down their blinds . The streets are empty ; the Kirks are full . If the master of the house happens to be unable to attend Kirk , he is certain to send his family and servants there ; and , although he may remain at home , he is in silent communion with the spirit ( I scorn to notice my nephew ' s ribald allusion to tumblers and lemons !) .
I own with regret that there are wicked infidels in Scotland , for the Scotch , are a reading , thinking , people ; and it is reading which misleads the mind . But , although those men rail against the strictness of observance everywhere required , they are not strong enough to resist it . We could ruin the man wl . o dared . We could take all his customers from him ; we could make all his friends look coldly on him . We could and we would ! Hence the Sabbath m in where shocked
observed , and with far greater propriety than England , I am at the depravity . True it is that a few pious men , like Lord Ashley and the M P ' s who voted with him , spend this day in consistent piety . They u > e no carriages ; even in the depths of winter they allow no fires to be lighted ; they suffer no meals to be cooked ; all labour of every kind they rigidly forbid ; oil recreation is in their eyes a sin ; they only walk out to walk to Church , and spend the remainder of the day in solemn seclusion with their Bible and cold
gruel . Vivian , with a tone of sarcasm , says , " To make the observance spring from law , when it should only issue from conscience , is to create hypocrites . " Is it bo ? But if you have no conscience ? Because your heart is hardened are we not to insist on forcing religion upon you ? These hypocrites . Oh ! the groat word , hypocrites ! Hypocrisy is a vice , granted ; but it is the homage which vice pays to virtue , the homage which infidelity pays to religion . And religion That suffices Let reliion flourish—I not what
profits by the homage . me . g care becomes of men . Let the individual suffer the eternal torments he merits , but nt any rate let us rejoice in anything which strengthens the Church . If hypocrisy were not of service to religion , we should not sec those bad hearted infidels railing against it as they do . Therefore , I say , Governments should make religious observance a law ; they should force men at least to conform outwardly , and " assume a virtue if they have it not . " Vivian ' s Aunt .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 8, 1850, page 21, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08061850/page/21/
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