32.
We spoke to-night of the cowardice, the crime of a particular suicide: O. G. agreed as to this instance, but added: “There is a different aspect under which suicide might be regarded. It is not always, I think, from a want of religion, or in a spirit of defiance, or a want of confidence in God that we quit life. It is as if we should flee to the feet of the Almighty and embrace his knees, and exclaim, ‘O my father! take me home! I have endured as long as it was possible; I can endure no more, so I come to you!’”
Of an amiable man with a disagreeable expressionless face, she said: “His countenance always gives me the idea of matter too strong, too hard for the soul to pierce through. It is as a plaster mask which I long to break (making the gesture with her hand), that I may see the countenance of his heart, for that must be beautiful!”
33.
Carlyle said to me: “I want to see some institution to teach a man the truth, the worth, the beauty, the heroism of which his present existence is capable; where’s the use of sending him to study what the Greeks and Romans did, and said, and wrote? Do ye think the Greeks and Romans would have been what they were, if they had just only studied what the Phœnicians did before them?” I should have answered, had I dared: “Yet perhaps the Greeks and Romans would not have been what they were if the Egyptians and Phœnicians had not been before them.”
