that. Not much can be said in the way of comfort on this head.
Queen Elizabeth, in her hard, wise way, writing to a mother who had
lost her son, tells her that she will be comforted in time; and why
should she not do for herself what the mere lapse of time will do
for her? Brave words! and the stern woman, more earnest than the
sage in "Rasselas," would have tried their virtue on herself. But I
fear they fell somewhat coldly on the mother's ear. Happily, in
these bereavements, kind Nature with her opiates, day by day
administered, does more than all the skill of the physician
moralists. Sir Thomas Browne says,

"Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares
with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly
remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction
leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and
sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables.
Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are slippery, or fall like
snow upon us, which, notwithstanding, is no unhappy stupidity. To
be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a
merciful provision in Nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our
few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into
cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of
repetitions."

The good knight thus makes much comfort out of our physical
weakness. But something may be done in a very different direction,
namely, by spiritual strength. By elevating and purifying the
sorrow, we may take it more out of matter, as it were, and so feel
less the loss of what is material about it.