Page:The Wanderer (1814 Volume 5).pdf/198

 inert is the body! How helpless, how useless, how incapable? Do we see who is near us? Do we hear who addresses us? Do we know when the most frightful crimes are committed by our sides? What, I demand, is our consciousness? We have not the most distant of any thing that passes around us: yet we open our eyes—and all is known, all is familiar again. We hear, we see, we feel, we understand!"

"Yes; but in that sleep, Harleigh, that mere mechanical repose of the animal, we still breathe; we are capable, therefore, of being restored to all our sensibilities, by a single touch, by a single start; 'tis but a separation that parts us from ourselves, as absence parts us from our friends. We yet live,—we yet, therefore, may meet again."

"And why, when we live no longer, may we not also, Elinor, meet again?"

"Why?—Do you ask why?—Look round the old church-yards! See you not