When the feasting is over: when charity, kindness and valorous deed
all lie far behind us: what is there left to the soul but some stray
recollections, a gain of some consciousness, and a feeling that
helps us to look on our place in the world with more knowledge and
less apprehension--a feeling blent with some wisdom, from the
numberless things it has learned? When the hour for rest has
sounded--as it must sound every night and at every moment of
solitude--when the gaudy vestments of love, and glory, and power
fall helplessly round us; what is it we can take with us as we seek
refuge within ourselves, where the happiness of each day is measured
by the knowledge the day has brought us, by the thoughts and the
confidence it has helped us to acquire? Is our true destiny to be
found in the things which take place about us, or in that which
abides in our soul?" Be a man's power or glory never so great," said
a philosopher, "his soul soon learns how to value the feelings that
spring from external events; and as he perceives that no increase
has come to his physical faculties, that these remain wholly
unchanged, neither altered nor added to, then does the sense of his
nothingness burst full upon him.
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