warm. I saw many a gallant heart, which seemed to me brave and loyal
as the crusaders sent by genuine and noble faith to Syria and the
sepulchre, pursuing, through days and nights, and a long life of
devotion, the hope of lighting at least a smile in the cold eyes, if
not a fire in the icy heart. I watched the earnest, enthusiastic
sacrifice. I saw the pure resolve, the generous faith, the fine scorn
of doubt, the impatience of suspicion. I watched the grace, the ardor,
the glory of devotion. Through those strange spectacles how often I
saw the noblest heart renouncing all other hope, all other ambition,
all other life, than the possible love of some one of those statues.
Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not the love to give. The Parian
face was so polished and smooth, because there was no sorrow upon the
heart,--and, drearily often, no heart to be touched. I could not
wonder that the noble heart of devotion was broken, for it had dashed
itself against a stone. I wept, until my spectacles were dimmed for
that hopeless sorrow; but there was a pang beyond tears for those icy
statues.

"Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in knowledge,--I did not
comprehend the sights I was compelled to see. I used to tear my
glasses away from my eyes, and, frightened at myself, run to escape my
own consciousness. Reaching the small house where we then lived, I
plunged into my grandmother's room and, throwing myself upon the
floor, buried my face in her lap; and sobbed myself to sleep with
premature grief. But when I awakened, and felt her cool hand upon my
hot forehead, and heard the low, sweet song, or the gentle story, or
the tenderly told parable from the Bible, with which she tried to
soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as
I lay in her lap, to steal a glance at her through the spectacles.