to wander over the snows, on which man has never printed the seal of his
blood-stained footsteps--which have never been darkened by the eagle's
shadow--which the thunder has never reached--which the war spirits have
never polluted; and on the ever-young summits where time, the
continuation of eternity, has left no trace.

Time! A strange thought has come into my head. How many fractional names
has the weak sense of man invented for the description of an infinitely
small particle of time out of the infinitely large circle of eternity!
Years, months, days, hours, minutes! God has nothing of all this: he has
not even evening nor morrow. With him all this has united itself into
one eternal _now_!... Shall we ever behold this ocean in which we have
hitherto been drowning? But I ask, to what end will all this serve man?
Can it be for the satisfaction of an idle curiosity? No! the knowledge
of truth, i.e. the All-knowing Goodness, does the soul of the reflecting
man thirst after. It wishes to draw a full cup from the fountain of
light which falls on it from time to time in a fine dew!

And I shall imbibe it. The secret fear of death melts like snow before
the beam of such a hope. I shall draw from it. My real love for my
fellow-creatures is a security for it. The leaden ways of error will
fall asunder before a few tears of repentance, and I shall lay down my
heart as an expiating sacrifice before the judgment-seat which will have
no terrors for me!

It is wonderful, my beloved--hardly do I look at the mountains, the sea,
the sky, ... but a solemn but inexpressibly sweet feeling o'er-burthens
and expands my heart. Thoughts of you mingle with it; and, as in dreams,
your form flits before me. Is this a foretaste of earthly bliss, which I
have only known by name, or a foreboding of ... etern ...? O dearest,