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bowers, and glades of bliss. And is not love a gift of the divinity? Love,
and her child, Hope, which can bestow wealth on poverty, strength on the
weak, and happiness on the sorrowing.
"My lot has not been fortunate. I have consorted long with grief, entered
the gloomy labyrinth of madness, and emerged, but half alive. Yet I thank
God that I have lived! I thank God, that I have beheld his throne, the
heavens, and earth, his footstool. I am glad that I have seen the changes
of his day; to behold the sun, fountain of light, and the gentle pilgrim
moon; to have seen the fire bearing flowers of the sky, and the flowery
stars of earth; to have witnessed the sowing and the harvest. I am glad
that I have loved, and have experienced sympathetic joy and sorrow with my
fellow-creatures. I am glad now to feel the current of thought flow through
my mind, as the blood through the articulations of my frame; mere existence
is pleasure; and I thank God that I live!
"
And all ye happy nurslings of mother-earth, do ye not echo my words? Ye
who are linked by the affectionate ties of nature, companions, friends,
lovers! fathers, who toil with joy for their offspring; women, who while
gazing on the living forms of their children, forget the pains of
maternity; children, who neither toil nor spin, but love and are loved!
"
Oh, that death and sickness were banished from our earthly home! that
hatred, tyranny, and fear could no longer make their lair in the human
heart! that each man might find a brother in his fellow, and a nest of
repose amid the wide plains of his inheritance! that the source of tears
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