A true disciple of Rousseau or Lamartine
would have analyzed his grief, dividing it into as many channels as
Alexander did the Oxus, till the main stream was lost, and each
individual rivulet might be crossed dry-shod. Both would have shed tears
perpetual and profuse. I read the other day of a Frenchman who, in the
midst of a mixed assembly, remembering that on that day ten years he had
lost a dear friend, instantly went out and wept bitterly. He was so
charmed with the happiness of the thought that, as he says, "I took the
resolution henceforth to weep for all whom I have loved, each on the
anniversary of their death."
Can you conceive any thing more touching than the picture of the
Bereaved One consulting his almanac and then "going at it with a will?"
It _was_ an athletic performance certainly; but remember what condition
he must have been in from the constant training.
From the episode of Niobe down to the best song in the "Princess," how
many beautiful lines have been devoted to those outward and visible
signs of sorrow?
Sadder elegiacs, more pathetic threnodies might have been written on the
tears that were stifled at their source, either from pride or from
physical inability to let them flow.
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