been shed over my feeling towards him: pride and hatred would surely have
been subdued into pity, and the record of those hidden sins would have
been shortened. But this is one of the vain thoughts with which we men
flatter ourselves. We try to believe that the egoism within us would
have easily been melted, and that it was only the narrowness of our
knowledge which hemmed in our generosity, our awe, our human piety, and
hindered them from submerging our hard indifference to the sensations and
emotions of our fellows. Our tenderness and self-renunciation seem
strong when our egoism has had its day--when, after our mean striving for
a triumph that is to be another's loss, the triumph comes suddenly, and
we shudder at it, because it is held out by the chill hand of death.

Our arrival in Prague happened at night, and I was glad of this, for it
seemed like a deferring of a terribly decisive moment, to be in the city
for hours without seeing it. As we were not to remain long in Prague,
but to go on speedily to Dresden, it was proposed that we should drive
out the next morning and take a general view of the place, as well as
visit some of its specially interesting spots, before the heat became
oppressive--for we were in August, and the season was hot and dry. But
it happened that the ladies were rather late at their morning toilet, and
to my father's politely-repressed but perceptible annoyance, we were not
in the carriage till the morning was far advanced. I thought with a
sense of relief, as we entered the Jews' quarter, where we were to visit
the old synagogue, that we should be kept in this flat, shut-up part of
the city, until we should all be too tired and too warm to go farther,
and so we should return without seeing more than the streets through
which we had already passed. That would give me another day's
suspense--suspense, the only form in which a fearful spirit knows the
solace of hope. But, as I stood under the blackened, groined arches of
that old synagogue, made dimly visible by the seven thin candles in the