Page:Romance & Reality 3.pdf/118

116 her heart seemed to remind her how little part she had in such quiet. Some slight chance usually rivets the attention: it did so now. On one of the tablets were inscribed various names of an apparently large family, the dates of the different deaths singularly near to each other. Emily felt as if her own solitary situation had never weighed upon her thoughts till now. "Many are kind to me, but none care for me." Youth, with its affection an impulse and a delight, judges others by itself, and exaggerates its claims. Strange it is that people (unless in the way of ostentation) never value the blessings they possess. But if life has a happiness over which the primeval curse has passed and harmed not, it is the early and long enduring affection of blood and habit. The passion which concentrates its strength and beauty upon one, is a rich and terrible stake, the end whereof is death;—the living light of existence is burnt out in an hour—and what remains? The dust and the darkness. But the love which is born in childhood—an instinct deepening into a principle—retains to the end something of the freshness belonging to the hour of its birth: the amusement partaken—the trifling