I
presume that in a right condition of our nervous nature, instead of our
being, as some would tell us, less exposed to the influences of nature,
we should in fact be altogether open to them. Our nerves would be a
thorough-fare for Nature in all and each of her moods and feelings,
stormy or peaceful, sunshiny or sad. The true refuge from the slavery to
which this would expose us, the subjection of man to circumstance, is to
be found, not in the deadening of the nervous constitution, or in a
struggle with the influences themselves, but in the strengthening of the
moral and refining of the spiritual nature; so that, as the storms rave
through the vault of heaven without breaking its strong arches with
their winds, or staining its etherial blue with their rain-clouds, the
soul of man should keep clear and steady and great, holding within it
its own feelings and even passions, knowing that, let them moan or rave
as they will, they cannot touch the nearest verge of the empyrean dome,
in whose region they have their birth and being.
For me, I felt myself now, just an expectant human snow-storm; and as I
sat on the box by the coachman, I rejoiced to greet the first flake,
which alighted on the tip of my nose even before we had cleared our own
grounds. Before we had got _up street_, the wind had risen, and the
snow thickened, till the horses seemed inclined to turn their tails to
the hill and the storm together, for the storm came down the hill in
their faces.
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