"It was a beautiful night: I went to look at--the world to come I call it--for I believe the redeemed are to inhabit those very stars hereafter, and visit them all in turn--and this world I now find is a world of sorrow and disappointment--so I went on the balcony to look at a better one: and oh it seemed so holy, so calm, so pure, that heavenly world Igazed and stretched my hands towards it for ever so little of its holiness and purity; and, that moment I heard a sigh. I looked, and there stood a gentleman just outside our gate, and it was _him._ I nearly screamed, and my heart beat so. He did not see me: for I had come out softly, and his poor head was down, down upon his breast; and he used to carry it so high, a little, little, while ago--too high some said; but not I. I looked, and my misgivings melted away, it flashed on me as if one of those stars had written it with its own light in my heart--'There stands Grief; not Guilt.' And before I knew what I was about I had whispered 'Alfred!' The poor boy started and ran towards me: but stopped short and sighed again. My heart yearned; but it was not for me to make advances to him, after his unkindness: so I spoke to him as coldly as ever I could, and I said, 'You are unhappy.'
"He looked up to me, and then I saw even by that light that he is enduring a bitter, bitter struggle: _so_ pale, _so_ worn, _so_dragged!--Now how many times have I cried, this last month? more than in all the rest of my life a great deal.--'Unhappy!' he said; 'I must be a contemptible thing if I was not unhappy.' And then he asked me should not I despise him if he was happy. I did not answer that: but I asked him why he was unhappy. And when I had, I was half frightened; for he never evades a question the least bit.
"He held his head higher still, and said, 'I am unhappy because I cannot see the path of honour.'
"Then I babbled something, I forget what: then he went on like this--ah, I never forget what _he_ says--he said Cicero says 'AEquitas ipsa lucet per se; something significat* something else:' and he repeated it slowly for me--he knows I know a little Latin; and told me that was as much as to say 'Justice is so clear a thing, that whoever hesitates must be on the road of wrong. And yet,' he said bitterly, '_I_ hesitate and doubt, in a matter of right and wrong, like an Academic philosopher weighing and balancing mere speculative straws.' Those were his very words. 'And so,'
said he, 'I am miserable; deserving to be miserable.'
*Dubitatio cogitationem significat injuriae.
"Then I ventured to remind him that he, and I, and all Christian souls, had a resource not known to heathen philosophers, however able. And Isaid, 'Dear Alfred, when I am in doubt and difficulty, I go and pray to Him to guide me aright: have you done so?' No, that had never occurred to him: but he would, if I made a point of it; and at any rate he could not go on in this way. I should soon see him again, and, once his mind was made up, no shrinking from mere consequences, he promised me. Then we bade one another good night and he went off holding his head as proudly as he used: and poor silly me fluttered, and nearly hysterical, as soon as I quite lost sight of him."_"Dec. 17th._--At church in the morning: a good sermon. Notes and analysis. In the evening Jane's clergyman preached. She came. Going out Iasked her a question about what we had heard; but she did not answer me.
At parting she told me she made it a rule not to speak coming from church, not even about the sermon. This seemed austere to poor me. But of course she is right. Oh, that I was like her."_"Dec. 18th._--Edward is coming out. This boy, that one has taught all the French, all the dancing, and nearly all the Latin he knows, turns out to be one's superior, infinitely: I mean in practical good sense. Mamma had taken her pearls to the jeweller and borrowed two hundred pounds. He found this out and objected. She told him a part of it was required to keep him at Oxford. 'Oh indeed,' said he: and we thought of course there was an end: but next morning he was off before breakfast and the day after he returned from Oxford with his caution money, forty pounds, and gave it mamma; she had forgotten all about it. And he had taken his name off the college books and left the university for ever. The poor, gentle tears of mortification ran down his mother's cheeks, and I hung round her neck, and scolded him like a vixen--as I am. We might have spared tears and fury both, for he is neither to be melted nor irritated by poor little us. He kissed us and coaxed us like a superior being, and set to work in his quiet, sober, ponderous way, and proved us a couple of fools to our entire satisfaction, and that without an unkind word! for he is as gentle as a lamb, and as strong as ten thousand elephants. He took the money back and brought the pearls home again, and he has written 'SOYEZDE VOTRE SIECLE' in great large letters, and has pasted it on all our three bed-room doors, inside. And he has been all these years quietly cutting up the _Morning Advertiser,_ and arranging the slips with wonderful skill and method. He calls it 'digesting the _Tiser!'_ and you can't ask for any _modern_ information, great or small, but he'll find you something about it in this digest. Such a folio! It takes a man to open and shut it. And he means to be a sort of little papa in this house, and mamma means to let him. And indeed it is so sweet to be commanded;besides, it saves thinking for oneself, and that is such a worry.