She lacked that centre of all hearts--God. He who made us, made us so that in Him alone we shall find peace. We may make idols of honour, duty, love, art; of human ideas and human beings; but even this is not to fall utterly. The sense of honour and duty are His gifts; He gave us hearts to love with, souls to know the beautiful, minds to conceive, feelings to spend and bestow. So long therefore as its action is outward, even our grossest idolatry will be pervaded with the sanctity of adoration and the majesty of God. But self-worship is the sin of Satan: we were never meant to be our own centre, our own hope, our own aim and divinity; there never has been a drearier prison than that which can be to itself a human heart; the other circles of hell are broad and free, compared to this narrowest of dungeons--self locked in self. It was this that, whilst outwardly she seemed so calm and cool, made Miriam internally so restless and unquiet. There was a healthy serenity in the ardour of Cornelius; but hers was agitated like an ever-troubled sea. She sought not in love its divine oblivion of self, but, on the contrary, a consciousness of existence, rendered more intense by the very tumult of passion. To love, for her, was not to be merged in some other being, but to absorb that other being in herself. All I know of her first lover was, that he was a captain in the navy, and that he perished with his ship four or five years before she met Cornelius. Her affection may have been outwardly devoted, but must have been selfish at heart. To have lovud again would have been no crime; but to wish to do so showed that the man had been nothing in comparison with the feeling. Even thus with her sister. Whilst she existed, Miriam seemed wrapped in her; once the young girl was in her grave, her name was never mentioned; everything that could recall her was studiously set aside as too painful; a new object, a new passion were eagerly grasped at; she had been, and she was no more. To those who love truly, there may be separation, but there is no death: their heart, like a hospitable lord, keeps sacred for ever the place of the guests he has once received and cherished. With Miriam it was not thus. Once the being in whom she had delighted could no longer minister to her delight, it ceased to occupy her. I never saw her after her parting from Cornelius, yet I can scarcely think that he, to win whose exclusive affection she had done so much, gave her one sad thought; she had not loved, but he had, and to him she left all the sorrow.