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walks leading , one to a parterre , and another to the fish-pond , and a third to a place more beloved than either , to the nook where the murmur of waters never ceased , and the urn overflowed perpetually into the cistern below , —how beloved was all this scene , whether the mower alone was heard whetting his scythe in the dewy morning , or the voices of sporting children enlivened it in the broad day , or the wood-pigeon wooed his mate in the stillness of the evening ! Hither I came day by day , with eye and ear
intent on the beauty and a spirit alive to the moving mysteries of the scene , but altogether alien from its order and repose . While my feet paced its shaven turf , my thoughts were bewildered in thorny ways . While I looked on the flower-beds where the glowing roses sprang up from the dark mould , and no weeds encumbered the growth of the meanest blossom , my understanding was like the field of the slothful , where stones disfigure the
surface , and thistles propagate their useless tribe . Then I stood beside the hives for hours , watching labours which I could ascertain to be profitable , and daily sought the lark ' s nest in the lawn , where I could perceive that natural solicitudes tended to some attainable end . Then I loved to lie on the brink of the pond and angle , speculating on the subservience of the different ranks of beings to each other , and , utterly unsatisfied respecting the destiny of all , preferring this humble use of my prerogative of power to the more strenuous exercise of it in the world . But , amidst the apparent
tranquillity of my retirements , what tempests were working in the deeper recesses where none could follow and mark ! My brethren would not have smiled when they saw me going forth , rod in hand , if they could have known what conflicts I must encounter in my solitude . The ranger ' s cheerful , greeting would often have been suppressed if my countenance had been the index of my thought . I well remember that the children once stopped to watch me when I was down upon my face beside the cistern .
They supposed me asleep , and went away on tiptoe . If they had presently overheard my bursting anguish , they would never again have dared to approach . And now that the urn is broken , and the cistern defiled , when the walks are tangled and the last rose of the year drops its leaves on the neglected soil , my spirit is at peace within itself , and at leisure for the mild regrets and finely shaded emotions which attend the retrospect of transition .
What can be the retribution of guilt , if the horrors of doubt are what I have felt them ? What can be the penalties of vice , if those of mere ignorance are so agonizing ? And if it be true that , through impatience of their misery , men plunge from the lesser evil into the greater , from the flood into the whirlpool , what voice of execration shall be found strong enough to curse the human inventions by which the simple are ensnared utfo doubt , or the human pride by which they are despised , or the human malice by which they are condemned , when once they have entered the toils ? While in my childhood I igporantly believed what men had told
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Sabbath Musings . 685
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vol . v . 3 d
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1831, page 685, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2602/page/33/
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