intermittent consciousness of them, for the intermittent
consciousness of so many generations, fleeting away one after
another? It was easier to conceive of the material fabric of things
as [70] but an element in a world of thought--as a thought in a mind,
than of mind as an element, or accident, or passing condition in a
world of matter, because mind was really nearer to himself: it was an
explanation of what was less known by what was known better. The
purely material world, that close, impassable prison-wall, seemed
just then the unreal thing, to be actually dissolving away all around
him: and he felt a quiet hope, a quiet joy dawning faintly, in the
dawning of this doctrine upon him as a really credible opinion. It
was like the break of day over some vast prospect with the "new
city," as it were some celestial New Rome, in the midst of it. That
divine companion figured no longer as but an occasional wayfarer
beside him; but rather as the unfailing "assistant," without whose
inspiration and concurrence he could not breathe or see,
instrumenting his bodily senses, rounding, supporting his imperfect
thoughts. How often had the thought of their brevity spoiled for him
the most natural pleasures of life, confusing even his present sense
of them by the suggestion of disease, of death, of a coming end, in
everything! How had he longed, sometimes, that there were indeed one
to whose boundless power of memory he could commit his own most
fortunate moments, his admiration, his love, Ay! the very sorrows of
which he could not bear quite to lose the sense:--one strong to
retain them even though [71] he forgot, in whose more vigorous
consciousness they might subsist for ever, beyond that mere
quickening of capacity which was all that remained of them in
himself! "Oh! that they might live before Thee"--To-day at least, in
the peculiar clearness of one privileged hour, he seemed to have
apprehended that in which the experiences he valued most might find,