If a Romanist
were to ask me the question put to Sir Henry Wotton, [1]I should content
myself by answering, that I could not exactly say when my religion, as he
was pleased to call it, began--but that it was certainly some sixty or
seventy years before _his_, at all events--which began at the Council of
Trent.
[Footnote 1:
"Having, at his being in Rome, made acquaintance with a pleasant priest,
who invited him, one evening, to hear their vesper music at church; the
priest, seeing Sir Henry stand obscurely in a corner, sends to him by a boy
of the choir this question, writ in a small piece of paper;--'Where was
your religion to be found before Luther?' To which question Sir Henry
presently underwrit;--'My religion was to be found then, where yours is not
to be found now--in the written word of God.'"--_Isaak Walton's Life of Sir
Henry Wotton_.]
_July_ 10. 1834.
_EUTHANASIA._
I am, dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange
that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen
into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope--
those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love,--for what is
Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as _one?_ I say _realities_;
for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream; [Greek: *ai
g_or t onar e Di s esti].
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