'Say, rather, Elinor, of your faith!—your faith in infidelity! Oh Elinor! why call you not, rather, upon faith to aid your belief? Faith, and revealed religion! The limited state of our positive perceptions, grants us no means for comparison, for judgment, or even for thought, but by analogy: ask yourself, then, Elinor,—What is there, even in immortality, more difficult of comprehension, than that indescribable daily occurrence, which all mankind equally, though unreflecting experience, of a total suspension of every species of living knowledge, of every faculty, of every sense,—called sleep? A suspension as big with matter for speculation and wonder, though its cessation is visible to us, as that last sleep, of which we view not the period.'

'Albert!—should you shake my creed,—shall I be better contented? or but yet more wretched?'

'Can Elinor think,—yet ask such a question? Can a prospect of a future state fail to offer a possibility of future happiness? Why wilfully reject a consolation that you have no means to disprove? What know you of this soul which you settle to be so easily annihilated? By what criterion do you judge it? You have none! save a general consciousness, that a something there is within us that mocks all search, yet that always is uppermost; that anticipates good or evil; that outruns all events; that feels the blow ere the flesh is touched; that expects the sound before the ear receives it; that, unseen, untraced, unknown, pervades, rules, animates all! that harbours thoughts, feelings, designs which no human force can controul; which no mortal, unaided by our own will, can discover; and which no aid whatever, either of our own or of others, can bring forward to any possible manifestation!'

'Alas, Harleigh! You shew me nonentity itself to be as doubtful as immortality! Of what wretched stuff are we composed! Which way must I now turn,—

'Lost and bewildered in my fruitless search,'[13]—

which way must I turn to develop truth? to comprehend my own existence! Oh Albert!—you almost make me wish to rest my perturbed mind where fools alone, I thought, found rest, or hypocrites have seemed to find it,—on Religion!'

'The feeling mind, dear Elinor, has no other serious serenity; no other hold from the black, cheerless, petrifying expectation of nullity. If, then, even a wish of light break through your dark despondence, read, study the Evangelists!—and truth will blaze upon you, with the means to find consolation.'

'Albert, I know now where I am!—You open to me possibilities that overwhelm me! My head seems bursting with fulness of struggling ideas!'

'Give them, Elinor, fair play, and they will soon, in return, give you tranquillity. Reflect only,—that that quality, that faculty, be its nature, its durability, and its purpose what they may, which the world at large agrees to call soul, has its universal comprehension from a something that is felt; not that is proved! Yet who, and where is the Atheist, the Deist, the Infidel of any description, gifted with the means to demonstrate, that, in quitting the body with the parting breath, it is necessarily extinct? that it may not, on the contrary, still BE, when speech and motion are no more? when our flesh is mingled with the dust, and our bones are dispersed by the winds? and BE, as while we yet exist, no part of our body, no single of our senses; never, while we seem to live, visible, yet never, when we seem to die, perishable? May it not, when, with its last sigh, it leaves the body, mingle with that vast expanse of air, which no instrument can completely analyse, and which our imperfect sight views but as empty space? May it not mount to upper regions, and enjoy purified bliss? May not all air be peopled with our departed friends, hovering around us, as sensible as we are unconscious? May not the uncumbered soul watch over those it loves? find again those it had lost? be received in the Heaven of Heavens, where it is destined,—not, Oh wretched idea!—to eternal sleep, inertness, annihilating dust;—but to life, to joy, to sweetest reminiscence, to tenderest re-unions, to grateful adoration to intelligence never ending! Oh! Elinor! keep for ever in mind, that if no mortal is gifted to prove that this is true,—neither is any one empowered to prove that it is false!'

'Oh delicious idea!' cried Elinor, rising: 'Oh image of perfection! Oh Albert! conquering Albert! I hope,—I hope;—my soul may be immortal!—Pray for me, Albert! Pray that I may dare offer up prayers for myself!—Send me your Christian divine to guide me on my way; and may your own heaven bless you, peerless Albert! for ever!—Adieu! adieu! adieu!'—