University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Gertrude's conductor had hurried on in advance
of her, partly as it seemed to preserve a respectful
distance, and partly to avoid any communication
with her. When she was within her humble
dwelling, she mounted to the second story, and winding
her way through a dark narrow passage to the
extremity of a back building, she reached a door,
at which she stopped for a moment, then placing
her finger on her lips, in token of silence, she signed
to Miss Clarence to await her, opened the door,
and disappeared. Gertrude heard a low murmur
within, but nothing to afford her a clue to the old
woman's purpose. `If I am brought here,' she
thought, `to be moved to charity by an extraordinary
spectacle of wretchedness, why this secresy?—
why Justine's and her mother's strange allusions?
The door was re-opened, and her name pronounced
by a well known voice, in a feeble, tender, and tranquil
tone. At the same time, the old woman, in explanation
of the part she had acted, held up before
Gertrude the picture of Trenton-falls. Gertrude
sprang forward, exclaiming “Louis Seton!” She
stood beside him, pressed his pale, emaciated hand

to her lips, and expressed in her asking eye, what her
tongue could not utter. The old woman remained
at the door, wringing her hands, and giving vent in
her own language, to her interpretation of a scene
that appeared in her simple view, to tell the common
tale of true love and a broken heart on one
side; and of disdain, and late relenting on the other.

Seton was wrapped in a flannel gown, and sustained
by pillows in an upright position. His bed
was drawn as near as possible to the hearth. A
single chair, and a small table, on which lay some
implements of his art, and a bible, and some vials,
were all the furniture of his room; its neatness
and order indicated the kind care of his hostess.

His form was attenuated, his hands bloodless, a
consuming color burned in his hollow cheeks, his
brow was pale and fixed as marble, his eye bright as
if the soul had there concentrated all its fires, and
his mouth, that flexible feature that first betrays the
mutations of feeling, was serene and rigid, as if the
seal of death were already set upon it.

At the first sight of Gertrude, a faint color overspread
his brow and temples; his lips trembled, and
his bosom heaved, he very soon however recovered
his composure, and said, “do not weep my dear
friend, but rather rejoice with me.”

“Nay, nay,” cried the old woman, advancing,
“weep on, child; for the love of Christ, weep on,
till his dying lips shall speak the word of peace to
you.”

“Dying!” echoed Gertrude, for that was the only
word that had made a distinct impression on her
sense; dying! oh, it cannot be. He must have a

physician, and better lodgings. My good friend, hasten
back to Mrs. Layton's, and bring my servant here.

“Bless you, young lady, it's too late; it's a miracle
he has lasted to see ye; aud ye'd better use the
spared minutes to lighten your conscience.”

Seton smiled faintly. “She is right, Gertrude,
I am dying, but do not let that grieve you; death is
to me, the happiest circumstance of my existence;”
then turning to the old woman, he added, “Marie,
I have nothing to forgive this lady; she has been
an angel of mercy to me.”

“God forgive me! she looks like it; ah, pity,”
she exclaimed, as the other natural solution of this
sad meeting occurred to her simple mind, “ah pity,
pity that ye ever parted! pity that ye have so met!”

Seton manifested no emotion at these vehement
exclamations, but calmly told Marie, he had much
to communicate to his friend; and she, after mending
the fire, and arranging some emollients, provided
by a dispensary-physician, left the apartment!

“Oh Louis,” said Gertrude, “why have you let
us remain in such cruel ignorance of your condition;
you have not surely ever for a moment, doubted
my father's sincere affection for you—or mine?”

“No, Gertrude, never.”

“And you certainly knew, there was nothing I
desired so much, as to serve you.”

“Yes, I well knew there was nothing too much to
expect from you, and your noble-minded father; but
I have been sick, and diseased in mind, Gertrude.”

“And was that a reason why you should fly
from the offices of affection.”

“Reason! I have been deprived of reason, and

long before my reason was gone, my feelings were
diseased and perverted, and my pride unsubdued, I
shrunk from an accumulating load of obligation.
One generous feeling I had. I could not bear to
be to you, Gertrude, like the veiled skeletons at the
feasts of the Egyptians, for ever presenting before
you gloomy images, and calling up sad thoughts.”

“Oh, how wrong you were, Louis! I had so few
objects of affection! Next to my father, you were
most important to my happiness.”

“Louis pressed her hand to his lips. “I was
wrong,” he said; “I underrated the generosity of
your affection, and I grossly magnified my own
miseries, but it's all past now; you will forgive me,
Gertrude?”

“Forgive you! do not speak of forgiveness—I
never, never shall forget that you have suffered such
extremity; and that it has come to this—”

“My dear friend, do not aflict yourself thus—my
troubles have all ended happily.” There was a
singular contrast and change, in both Gertrude and
Seton. He was collected and serene, as if he had
already touched the shore of eternal peace. She
agitated, as one still tempest-tost on the uncertain
waves of life. But after a little while, she regained
her usual ascendancy over her emotions, and
ashamed that she had for a moment disturbed his holy
peace, she sat down beside him, and listened with
tolerable composure, to his relation of the particulars
of his life, since they parted. During his recital
he had frequent turns of fainting, but they were
relieved by intervals of rest.

“My life is so far spent,” he said, “that I can

only glance at the past. There was much, of
which you were ignorant, Gertrude, that aggravated
my malady before we left Clarenceville for Trenton.
The immediate cause of my melancholy was suspected,
if not known, and I was subjected to the
gossiping scrutiny of our neighbors, and the vulgar
intimations of the servants. Coarse minds graduate
others by their external condition. You were
rich, and I was poor, and therefore in their estimation,
on their level. You remember the circumstances that
led me to betray my cherished passion. My nerves
were laid bare by this exposure, and while I shrunk
from the slightest touch, I was told that one said,
`it was a shame for a beggarly drawing-master to
take advantage of Mr. Clarence' generosity,' and
another said, `still waters run deep, but who would
have thought of Louis Seton playing such a game?'
and `she has served him right—she will carry her
fortune to a better market than Louis Seton's.”'

“Oh spare me—spare me, Louis.”

“I repeat this to you, Gertrude, because it is my
only apology for having yielded to a sickly sensibility,
compounded of physical weakness, pride,
and humility.”

“I want to know no more, Louis; you have suffered,
and I have been the cause.”

“The cause was innocent, and the suffering is
past, Gertrude—therefore listen patiently. We went
to Trenton. Delirious as I was, I perfectly remembered
our progress over those wild rocks—with
what skill and resolution you lured me on and protracted
my last act of madness, till I was saved by
a wonderful intervention. At the time I believed

my preserver to be a supernatural being. I fancied,
in the lawless vagaries of my mind, that his
face had been revealed to me in a dream; but afterwards
I remembered the resemblance was to a head
you once painted from memory—the face of a beautiful
youth, the friend, as you told me, of your
brother. Gertrude, do not avert your face. I
know not what that deep blush means, but nothing
it can mean would disturb me now. How am I
changed! Do you remember that, proud of your
proficiency in my art, I wished to show the head to
your father, and that to end my importunity you threw
it in the fire? What hours of tormenting thoughts
—what nights of watchfulness did that simple act
cost me, so do we selfishly shrink from the appropriation
of affections to another, even when unattainable
to ourselves.” Seton's voice faltered for a moment.
“As I retrace my former feelings,” he continued,
“their shadows cross me. But to return to
the night at Trenton. The image of your figure, as I
saw you when I first opened my eyes, kneeling, and a
celestial expression lighting up your face, remained
in my mind in all the freshness of its actual presentment.
It abode with me in darkness, in solitude, in
misery—in madness, Gertrude.”

“After I escaped from your father's beneficent
offers at Trenton, I made my way to New-York—
I know not how—my recollections of that time are
like the confused and imperfect images of a distressful
dream. I have since learned that I was
found perishing in the street. It was impossible to
identify me, and I was taken to the alms-house,
and placed with the maniacs, supported by public

charity. I cannot now, when all other evils have
lost their power to wound me, look back without
shuddering, on that period when neglect, injudicious
treatment, privation, darkness, a sense of
wrong, conscious degradation, misery in every form,
exasperated my disease. Oh, Gertrude, is it not
strange that men rioting in luxuries, and still more
strange that those who are blessed with quiet homes
of health and happiness, should permit their brethren
suffering under the visitation of the severest of physical
evils, to languish in the receptacles of poverty—in
the dungeons allotted to crime?”

Gertrude answered this appeal by a solemn resolution,
which she afterwards religiously performed,
to make a rich offering to an unequivocal and neglected
form of charity. Seton proceeded: “Gertrude,
the person whose name I have since ascertained
to be Roscoe, again appeared to rescue me
from a more dreadful fate than that from which he
saved me at Trenton. I know not what motive led
him to inspect the wards of the alms-house, but
there he found me, scratching on the wall the outlines
of the scene at Trenton, with a bone which I
had taken from my soup, and sharpened for that purpose.
He instantly recognised me. I hailed him
as God's messenger to me, and besought him to release
me. He listened to me—he looked with deep
interest at the outline I had traced, and after ascertaining
that I was harmless and convalescing, he
promised to take me from my imprisonment. The
same day he returned, and conveyed me to a farmer's
house in a retired spot on Long Island.” Seton

paused, and Gertrude, released from the intense
attention she had given, covered her face and wept
without restraint. Her bitter grief for all Seton
had endured, was mingled with a feeling very different
but scarcely less affecting—a feeling that Heaven
had linked her sympathies with Roscoe's, had mysteriously
interwoven the chain of their purposes, and
feelings. She felt keenly too, the delicacy which
Roscoe had manifested in withholding from her the
particulars of Seton's sufferings, and of his generous
part in ministering to his relief. “Gertrude,” resumed
Seton, in a voice of the deepest tenderness,
“I cannot mistake this emotion—you know Roscoe
—it is as it should be—”

She started as if the secrets of her inmost heart
had been revealed. She cleared her voice, and
made an effort to speak, for she could not permit
such an inference from her emotion. Seton laid his
hand on hers, “I ask no explanation—no communication,
Gertrude.” Again he reverted to himself.
“Never shall I forget the first days of my emancipation—my
keen enjoyment of liberty and nature. It
was early in October—the sky was cloudless—the
air serene and balmy. Oh, how exquisitely I relished
those common and neglected bounties of
Heaven! I lived in the open air. The clear soft
skies, the transparent atmosphere, all nature seemed
to me instinct with the Spirit of God, and it was
so, to my awakened mind. The world appeared to
me to lie in one dark total eclipse, and myself to be
conveyed beyond the reign of shadows—to dwell
in light—to be alone in the universe with God.”

“These blissful days soon passed, and I was confined
to the house by inclement weather. Roscoe
sent me some implements for painting—I seized
them as a hungry man would have snatched at food.
I finished at one sitting the scene at Trenton. I
perceived myself the extravagance of the picture,
and sat down to the work anew. I painted another,
and another, and another. Each was better than
the last, and each indicated a correspondent progress
in the recovery of reason. The application
to an habitual employment restored my thoughts to
their natural order of succession, and my feelings to
their natural temperature.

“I never communicated my name, or spoke of
you to Roscoe. For a long time I retained my
first illusion, and believed he was a supernatural
being; and it was very long before I could bear to
pronounce your name. By degrees these illusions
and extravagancies lost their force. I no longer
withheld myself from you and your father from
pride, or morbid sensibility, but I wished to test my
moral strength in solitude, before I encountered new
trials; my brothers, I had reason to think, believed
me dead—I wished, for a time, to be dead to
the world. I wrote to Roscoe, and expressed my
gratitude, and acquainted him with my determination.

“It is now eight weeks since I left my place of
refuge—a changed man. My mind, like the body
refreshed by sleep, awoke to new vigor. The engrossing
passion that had absorbed my faculties,
was gone—no, not gone, Gertrude, but converted
to a peaceful, rational sentiment, that accords with

happiness and is immortal in its nature—a sentiment
as distinct from the passion that had agitated
my being, as the elements are in their natural and
gentle ministry from their wildest strife and desolation.[1]

“I was changed too in other respects. The
world, `at best a broken reed, but oft a spear'—the
world had lost its power to wound me. The operations
of the spirit are so mysterious, the modes of
its communication with the Divinity so incomprehensible,
that I shrink from attempting to communicate,
even to you, Gertrude, the convictions of
my own mind. I had new views, new hopes, and
purposes—whence came they? not from the outward
world—they were the inspiration of Heaven.

“I applied myself to painting; the avails of my
constant labor were small; and while, from the
elated state of my mind, I was unconscious of the
presence of disease, consumption was sapping my
life—the progress of the malady was accelerated by my
rashness. A painter had employed me to finish the
draperies of some portraits. I was so exhausted by
the labors of the day, that I shrunk from walking
to my lodgings, and I slept on his bare floor. At
the end of the week I was carried home; there a
new shock awaited me—my picture, my sacred
treasure, had been sent to an auction, to raise the
pittance due to my landlady. I forgot my sickness
and my weakness, and rushed out of the house to

recover it. Again I met Roscoe, who seemed
always sent to me in my extremity—he had the
picture, and restored it to me; and I confess to you
I was scarcely less grateful than when he saved my
life, or when he restored my liberty. I removed my
lodgings to this place. I have painfully earned a
subsistence till the last ten days, and since then I
have received every kindness from this good old
Swiss woman.”

“But why, why,” asked Gertrude, “have you
not written to us?”

“I have twice written, but received no answer;
I knew this was accidental. I had relinquished all
hope of hearing from you; God be praised that old
Marie met you, and was induced by your resemblance
to the picture, to ask you to come here.”

Gertrude assigned her father's absence from Clarenceville
as the cause of Seton's receiving no replies
to his letters; and then, but not without an
obvious effort, she asked, `why he had not communicated
his wants to Roscoe?'

“I did, yesterday, send a note to the post-office
for him, but my hand was tremulous and stiff with
cold, and the direction may not have been legible.
But, truly, Gertrude, I have wanted little; a mortal
sickness admits but few alleviations. My attendant
has been kind, and what she could not provide for
me, I have been satisfied without.”

Nature had put forth her mysterious force—Gertrude's
presence soothed and stimulated him, and
Seton was sustained through his narrative by an
energy of feeling that seemed to hold death in abeyance.

He had not spoken continuously, but with frequent
and fearful interruptions, and as his voice died
away in the conclusion, and his eyes became fixed
in an eager, soul-piercing gaze, Gertrude, who had
never before seen a human being in extremity, was
appalled with the infalliable tokens of approaching
death. Seton laid her hand on his heart—“it beats
feebly,” he said, “my life is fast passing away;”
and added, with an expression of some concern,
“do you fear to stay alone with me, Gertrude?”

“No—no Louis!” she replied, subduing her natural
shrinkings, “I have no fear—no wish, but to
remain with you.”

“I thank God!” said Seton, with a smile of sweet
serenity, “my last wish is gratified—your presence,
Gertrude, makes my dismissal happier.”

Seton's fears of death had long been vanquished
by the only force that can subdue its terrors—the
force of religious faith. He had studied the Christian
revelation faithfully, and he believed it, not with
a mere intellectual, cold assent, but with the rapture
of the mortal who reads there the charter of his immortality—with
the exultation of the prisoner who
receives the promise of pardon and release. He
found there the solution of his sufferings. What if
his life had been a dark and forlorn scene? His
brief sorrows had been God's ministers to prepare
his spirit for inextinguishable happiness. What if
he had wandered in dismal exile through a far and
foreign land? His path lay homeward, and could
he shrink and tremble when his foot was on the
threshold of his Father's house? Oh, no. The decline
of life was to him the crumbling of his prisonwalls.

He had watched with joy, through solitary
days and wakeful nights, the decay of the mortal
mould, that encumbered and imprisoned his longing
spirit.

Life had never, in its blithe and morning hour,
been bright to him. His childhood had been neglected—his
youth sickly—his manhood blasted—
his affections, those ordained and sweetest springs
of happiness, sources of misery. They were now
elevated far above the accidents of life, and ready
to expand and rest in the celestial region for which
they were created.

Seton's voice was exhausted by the long effort it
had sustained. He afterwards spoke little, but no
power of language could have added force to his
few and brief expressions of faith and tranquillity—
to the eloquence of his silence, when his eye was
raised in devotion, or beamed with holy revealings
from the sanctuary of his soul. Gertrude's spirit
rose with his. There was something affecting and
elevating in her disregard of the circumstances of
death—so appalling to the young and inexperienced—in
her tender manifestations of sacred sympathy
with the departing spirit. Hour after hour
passed away. Marie came in occasionally to render
little services. The day was drawing to its
close. The old woman beckoned Gertrude to the
door. “He is changing fast,” she said, and participating
to a very old and general superstition, she
added, “He will go with the turn of the tide: will
you not have some one called?—it is a fearful
thing, young lady, to bide alone.”

Gertrude, though not without some natural reluctancy,

would not permit it to interfere with the
wish Seton had expressed, and she again assured
Marie that she preferred no person should be summoned—and
Marie, sorely against her own judgment,
assented; but as she descended the stairs,
meditating on the singular boldness of the young
lady, she was summoned to the street-door by a
loud knocking. She opened it to Gerald Roscoe,
and inferring from his eager inquiries, that he was
a particular friend of Seton, and rightly judging
that there was no time to be lost in the preliminaries
of ceremony, she bade him follow her. She opened
the door of Seton's apartment, and signed to Roscoe
to approach cautiously. He did so, and when
he reached the threshold he stood as if he were spell-bound.
Seton was too far gone, Gertrude too
deeply absorbed, to observe him.

The setting sun shone brightly through the only
window in the apartment. Seton's eye was turned
towards it. As the last ray faded away, he lifted his
eye to Gertrude, and said with perfect distinctness,
“My last moment is bright too, Gertrude.” A slight
convulsion passed over his features. He made a sudden
effort to raise his head. Gertrude rested it on her
bosom. A celestial smile, a quivering light from the
soul played over his lips, he half uttered the last prayer
of faith, `Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!' and all was
over.—Gertrude remained motionless, bending
over the vacant form. The outward world vanished
from before her. It seemed to her that the veil was
lifted that envelopes the unknown world, and that
she touched its blissful shore with the released spirit.

But to return from this high mysterious vision, to
the silent chamber, and the lifeless form!—to the
penetrating sense of separation and loss!—this is the
terror of death. Death comes to the body only, it is
but the change of that frame that is at one moment the
expressive organ of the ever-living spirit, and the
next, worthless clay, that mocks our grief with its
stillness and immobility. This was the moment of
grief and unrepressed tears; afterwards came the
grateful considerations that she had been permitted
to witness, and in some degree to minister to the
peace of Seton's departure—that his conflict with
the jarring elements of this world was ended, and
that she had seen the demonstrations of the omnipotent
power of religion.

Roscoe watched her with intense interest as she
bent over Seton, her hands clasped, her face lit with
the tenderness of affection, her eye raised in the
fervency of devotion. She pressed her lips to Seton's
brow. `She loves him,' thought Roscoe, `but
it is with that excellence with which angels love
good men.'

“Ye'd best speak to the young lady,” said
Marie, who thought that time enough had been allowed
to the exclusive indulgence of Miss Clarence'
feelings. Gertrude turned at the sound of her voice,
and for the first time perceived Gerald Roscoe.

The sight of him excited no selfish emotion. Her
feelings were now all in one channel, and he appeared
to her only as Seton's friend and benefactor.
She advanced, gave him her hand frankly, and expressed
her sorrow that he had not come sooner, and

her warm unmeasured gratitude for his generous
kindness to Seton.

The intercourse of young persons of different
sexes is so apt to be embarrassed by the conscious
desire to please, and by the artificial modes of
polished society, that the genuine motions of the
mind are seldom embodied in unpremeditated language.
Gertrude had never before met Roscoe
without a degree of embarrassment that imparted
to her manners a slight shade of constraint; but
now, under the influence of deep and strongly excited
sensibility, she forgot all that was of peculiar
interest in their relation to each other, and talked to
him with the freedom of intimate friendship. The
occasion gave a tenderness to her manner, and her
raised feelings an eloquence to her expressions, that
penetrated Roscoe's heart. She did not, as on
every former occasion, studiously avoid any allusion
to herself, nor measure her phrases as if she were beset
with rocks and quicksands. She spoke of her
affection for Seton as if he had been her brother,
and only veiled a part of the truth when she imputed
the disease of his mind, entirely to a morbid sensibility
preying on a delicate frame.

Roscoe perceived that Gertrude was off her
guard, and seemed utterly to have forgotten the secret
she had so sedulously kept. He expected that
some accidental word would relieve his curiosity,
which though rebuked for a moment, had revived,
and put him on the rack of alternate hope, and disappointment.
One natural question, one insidious
word, might elicit what he so ardently desired to
know; but that word would not be generous or

honorable, and therefore could not be uttered by
him. He was provoked at himself, that this importunate
thought should violate the sanctity of such a
moment; still it would not down. He turned his
eye to Seton's lifeless form. He gazed at Gertrude
with a far deeper interest than he had ever before
felt; he listened with thrilling interest to all she
said, yet that impertinent query, `who can she be?'
disturbed the harmony of his mind, like a creaking
hinge. He heard the old woman again mounting
the stairs—`now,' he thought, `her name must be
spoken, or something said that will dissolve this
spell.' But Marie approached Gertrude, who was
silently gazing on Seton, with the last yearnings of
affection, and addressed her, according to her usual
custom, in the third person—“a carriage was waiting
for the lady,” she said, “and here was a note
from the mistress.” Roscoe smiled, in spite of his
vexation, at the simple mode in which his hopes
were baffled.

The note was from Mrs. Layton, in reply to a
line Gertrude had sent, explaining her detention.
“My sweetest Gertrude,” said the note, “I send a
“carriage for you—you must indeed come home—
“you are exposing yourself to too severe a trial—
“I should have come immediately to you, but my
“feelings unfit me for scenes. Poor, poor Se
“ton! `he dies a most rare youth of melancholy.'
“How affecting such a death, in this heartless
“world! You probably will prefer that the funeral
“solemnities should be at Trinity-Church. As

“soon as we know your wishes, Layton will make
“all the arrangements.

“Dieu te garde, ma chère.
“G. L.”

`Funeral solemnties at Trinity-Church!' repeated
Gertrude to herself, `an ostentatious funeral
would be a mockery to him who so shunned the
world's eye while living.'

“Mr. Seton,” she said, turning to Roseoe, “was
as you well know, a total stranger in the city. I am
reluctant to leave the last rites to hirelings; and if
you, Mr. Roscoe—”

Roscoe interrupted her faltering request, with an
assurance that she had only anticipated him—that he
should make every necessary arrangement, and
should feel himself happy in being permitted to render
the last tribute of humanity to her friend.

Gertrude expressed her gratitude for all he had
done, and for all he promised to do, with so much
warmth and gracefulness that Roscoe felt he had
given no equivalent for such thanks from such a
source; and yet he thought, if she does feel obliged
to me, there is a boon withheld, which would requite
them a thousandfold.' But this boon was not
even hinted at, and Gertrude had actually left the
apartment, and was in the carriage on her way home,
before the question occurred to her, and then it
struck her like an electric flash, whether she had betrayed
her name. She reviewed all that had passed;
she tried to recall every word, but that she was
not able to satisfy herself, is the best proof of the
engrossing emotions Seton's death had excited.

The heroines of our times live in a business
world, and even funeral rites cannot be a matter of
pure sentiment. Miss Clarence had been too long
intrusted with the responsibility of pecuniary affairs,
to fall into a feminine obliviousness in matters
of expense, and as soon as she was in her own
apartment, she sent for Justine, and giving her a
sum of money, she requested her to place it in her
mother's hands, to be appropriated to Mr. Seton's
funeral charges. To this, she added a compensation
for Marie's services, and a generous reward for
her fidelity and kindness.

Justine, accustomed to Mrs. Layton's extravagant
expressions of feeling, and her utter neglect
of duties, had fallen into the common error of generalizing
her individual experience, and honestly believed,
that all fine ladies exhibited their sensibilities
in nervous affection, and were subject to lapses
of memory in money affairs; and she regarded Miss
Clarence with a wonder and satisfaction, similar to
that of a naturalist, who is analyzing a new species
in nature.

“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, as she stowed away
the separate rolls of bills in her pocket-book, “how
singular! my sweet young lady you look quite
spent, and yet, God bless you—you think of all this
as if you had no feelings, and were not a lady, at all.”

`Any man may die heroically in company,' said
Voltaire. He lived in `company,' and it was his
misfortune to find food for his scoffing wit in the
perpetual masquerade of artificial society. He fed
his own vanity with its natural and abounding nutriment—the
follies of his species. But he should

have raised his eye from the feet of clay, to the fine
gold of the image—he should have penetrated beyond
the seats of the money-changers, to the sacred
fire that burnt within the holy of holies—to the divine
principle in the soul of man. Had he been familiar
with the retreats of unaffected and unostentatious
virtue—had he witnessed the quiet death of the
faithful, unsullied by superstition, exaggeration, or
self-delusion, he might have been saved from his unbelief
in human virtue, the most dangerous of all
skepticism—he might have employed his delightful,
unimitated and inimitable talents in developing the
noble capacities, and advancing the high destinies
of man, instead of `riant comme un démon ou comme
un singe des miséres de cette espèce humaine.'

Let the skeptic enter such a chamber of death,
as Louis Seton's, and see the eye of faith kindle
with celestial light, as the poor struggler with the
evils of life, approaches the moment of release—
let him observe the profound peace that earth can
no longer trouble; and then let him, if he can, employ
the mind God has given him, to controvert
the immortality of that mind—the truth, that sustains
man amid wrong, oppression, disappointment,
calamity in every form, and in that fearful visitation
which comes alike to all.