‘I sometimes think,’ said she, clinging tenderly to me, and clasping my hand firmly in both of hers—‘that when we are free from this world, and disenthralled, are ushered into a new existence, we shall lose our identity, and have to find out new sympathies and sources of enjoyment; and the thought saddens me.’
‘Why saddens you?’
‘O! I would not forget this world. I would not forget its beauties—its rocks, woodlands, wilds,
‘Its human and its natural beauties all.’—
I would not forget them. They must be a source of felicity ever—ever pleasant to be remembered—ever spots to which memory shall turn her saddened eye, when the heart is sick with its melancholies.’
‘Fanny, think you the blessed weep?’
‘O! I know not—‘but I could not bear to forget this beautiful world, and those I love in it.’
‘Think you’—said I—‘that he who made the spirit and knows its capacities, will not find for it something more substantial than earth proffers us? You know the aged tell us, there’s no bliss here; and we see the young, and gay, and beautiful, fall around us like leaves in Autumn-time. What matters it then if we take other minds, as distinct as our own bodies?’
‘Arthur! Arthur!—you pain me. Would you not know me hereafter?’
‘Doubt it not—we shall know each other.’