But even at first the sense of parental duty withheld him from such a prayer. The grief, though “fine, full, perfect,” was not a grief that
violenteth in a sense as strong
As that which causeth it.1
1 SHAKESPEARE.
There was this to compress, as it were, and perhaps to mitigate it, that it was wholly confined to himself, not multiplied among others, and reflected from them. In great public calamities when fortunes are wrecked in revolutionary storms, or families thinned or swept off by pestilence, there may be too many who look upon it as
Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris;2
and this is not so much because
—fellowship in woe doth woe assuage,3
and that
—the mind much sufferance doth oerskip
When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship3
as because the presence of a fellow sufferer at such times calls forth condolence, when that of one who continues in the sunshine of fortune might provoke an envious self-comparison, which is the commonest of all evil feelings. But it is not so with those keener griefs which affect us in our domestic relations. The heart-wounds which are inflicted by our fellow creatures, are apt to fester: those which we receive in the dispensations of Almighty wisdom and the course of nature, are remedial and sanative. There are some fruits which must be punctured before they can ripen kindly; and there are some hearts which require an analogous process.