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100 EUGENIE DE GUERIST.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
«¦ » It Journals Is Consolatory And Lett...
will always be so . Believe me quite severed from M . Lamennais —one is not always at the breast . "
In this somewhat bored fashion the letter ends , and we can well excuse it . On the other hand , there is something to be said for the
puzzle and distress which must have been occasioned by the tone of mixed indifference and discontent with which the poor young
man speaks of life and its prospects . Mr . Matthew Arnold compares him with the young Scotch poet , David Gray , also with Keats
and Shelley ; more frequently has come to our own minds the thought of the late Arthur H . Clough , as made known in some of
his poems . There is something of the same philosophic endurance of lifeand the mistakes that are made in it . At other
, times Maurice complains heavily of the pressure of society . Perhaps it was after reading some of his remarks of this kind
after his death that his sister writes thus : "At what period ( of the world ) ought Maurice to have been born ? A question I
only ask as regarding the fitness of certain epochs to promote the happiness of such an one . One cannot see at what period , for
their happiness , one can suspend the cradle of certain geniuses . Intelligence is , like love , always accompanied by pain . That is
because it is placed here below , and all that is displaced ought to suffer . Religious soulsthose which re-enter into God , are those
, alone which find some comfort in life . Men offer to men only falsehood or insufficiency . I know them but little myself—I ,
inhabitant of the woods ; but what I think I say . I have never found happiness in any one—not complete happiness . The securest ,
the fullest , the best has been in Maurice , not without tears in its joy . Happiness is a thing surrounded with thorns , on whatever
side we touch it . "—{ Journal _, p . 398 . ) If the reader asks whether Eugenie approved of Maurice's
position at La Chenaie , it must be answered , at the time , " yes . " She thoroughly liked Maurice's associates , the Abbe Gerbet ,
Hyppolite de Morvonnais , and others . Montalembert and St . Beuve also visited them . Respecting the Chiefthe High Priest ,-
, the family may have had doubts , and ere long the course of his mind and his condemnation by the Church , threw him from his
pinnacle in the estimation of them all . Yet never did the amiable spirit of Eugenie entertain harsh thoughts concerning him . Long
afterwards she wrote to her brother : — " I dreamt this night that I was with M . Lamennais . I spoke
of thee to him , of his own works , old and new : we disputed warmly , and were not agreed , for he was not so with himself . He
contradicted everything he had said before . And I pitied him , poor wanderer ! ' Oh ! you detest the Heretic ? ' ' No , sir , no ;
you occasion me deep grief ; you seem to me a wandering star , but still one which cannot fail to reappear in heaven . ' And , upon that
he and the place where we were , and I , all were confounded in the
100 Eugenie De Guerist.
100 EUGENIE DE _GUERIST .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1863, page 100, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041863/page/28/
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