Very exquisite in the aptness as well as poetry of the comparison! Some walk by daylight, some walk by starlight. Those who see the sun do not see the stars; those who see the stars do not see the sun. He says in another place:— “I am averse to too much activity of the imagination on the future life. I hope to die full of confidence that no evil awaits me: but any picture of a future life distresses me. I feel as if an eternity of existence were already an insupportable burden on my soul.” How characteristic of that lassitude of the soul and sickness of the heart which “asks not happiness, but longs for rest!” [Illustration] 119. “Those are the worst of suicides who voluntarily and prepensely stab or suffocate their fame when God hath commanded them to stand on high for an example.” [Illustration] 120. Carlyle thus apostrophised a celebrated orator, who abused his gift of eloquence to insincere purposes of vanity, self-interest, and expediency:—“You blasphemous scoundrel! God gave you that gifted tongue of yours, and set it between your teeth, to make known your true meaning to us, not to be rattled like a muffin-man’s bell!” [Illustration] 121. I think, with Carlyle, that a lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me. A. thinks this is too _young_ a feeling, and that as the truth is sure to conquer in the end, it is not worth while to fight every separate lie, or fling a torch into every infected hole. Perhaps not, so far as we are ourselves concerned; but we should think of others. While secure in our own antidote, or wise in our own caution, we should not leave the miasma to poison the healthful, or the briars to entangle the unwary. There is no occasion perhaps for truth to sally forth like a knight-errant tilting at every vizor, but neither should she sit self-assured in her tower of strength, leaving pitfalls outside her gate for the blind to fall into. [Illustration] 122. “There is a way to separate memory from imagination—we may narrate without painting. I am convinced that the mind can employ certain indistinct signs to represent even its most vivid impressions; that instead of picture writing, it can use something like algebraic symbols: such is the language of the soul when the paroxysm of pain has passed, and the wounds it received formerly are skinned over, not healed:—it is a language very opposite to that used by the poet and the novel-writer.”—_Blanco White._ True; but a language in which the soul can converse only with itself; or else a language more conventional than words, and like paper as a tender for gold, more capable of being defaced and falsified. There is a proverb we have heard quoted: “Speech is silver, silence is golden.” But better is the silver diffused than the talent of gold buried. [Illustration] 123.