a co-agency with unresisted grief, end in the paradoxical result of
making out of grief itself a luxury; such a luxury as finally becomes
a snare, overhanging life itself, and the energies of life, with growing
menaces. All deep feelings of a _chronic_ class agree in this, that
they seek for solitude, and are fed by solitude. Deep grief, deep love,
how naturally do these ally themselves with religious feeling! and all
three--love, grief, religion--are haunters of solitary places. Love,
grief, and the mystery of devotion,--what were these without solitude?
All day long, when it was not impossible for me to do so, I sought the
most silent and sequestered nooks in the grounds about the house or
in the neighboring fields. The awful stillness oftentimes of summer
noons, when no winds were abroad, the appealing silence of gray or
misty afternoons,--these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the
woods, into the desert air, I gazed, as if some comfort lay hid in
_them_. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks.
Obstinately I tormented the blue depths with my scrutiny, sweeping
them forever with my eyes, and searching them for one angelic face
that might, perhaps, have permission to reveal itself for a moment.

At this time, and under this impulse of rapacious grief, that grasped
at what it could not obtain, the faculty of shaping images in the
distance out of slight elements, and grouping them after the yearnings
of the heart, grew upon me in morbid excess. And I recall at the present
moment one instance of that sort, which may show how merely shadows,
or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient
basis for this creative faculty.

On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my family to church: it was
a church on the ancient model of England, having aisles, galleries,
[12] organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions