There are thoughts thou canst not banish;
By a power to thee unknown,
Thou canst never be alone;
Thou art wrapt as with a shroud,
Thou art gathered in a cloud;
And for ever shalt thou dwell
In the spirit of this spell.”
A woman with her husband had been employed in a French hospital as servants for a considerable time. Having left their situations, the wife, thirty years afterwards, declared she heard a voice within, commanding her to repair instantly to the chief commissioner of police, and confess the thefts she had committed during the time she was at the hospital. The fact was, that she had been guilty of appropriating occasionally to her own use a portion of the food supplied for the patients attached to the Institution. The commissioner listened to the woman’s story, and her demand that she should be punished, but refused to take any cognizance of the offence. She returned home, and for some time was extremely dejected. She became so miserable that existence was no longer desirable; and as the legal tribunals refused to punish her, she determined on suicide, which she committed at the age of fifty-one.
It is admitted, by almost universal consent, that there is no affection of the mind that exerts so tremendous an influence over the human race as that of love.