Here then I end my greeting,--except in as far as the whole book is truly conversation with you. I shall not direct it to your hands, but trust to the most infallible force in the universe,--human sympathy,--to bring these words under your eye. If they should have the virtue to summon thoughts which may, for a single hour, soften your couch, shame and banish your foes of depression and pain, and set your chamber in holy order and something of cheerful adornment, I may have the honour of being your nurse, though I am myself laid low,--though hundreds of miles are between us, and though we can never know one another’s face or voice. Yours, ---- ESSAYS. THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT IN THE SICK-ROOM. “Lasting! what’s lasting? The earth that swims so well, must drown in fire, And Time be last to perish at the stake. The heavens must parch; the universe must smoulder. Nothing but thoughts can live, and such thoughts only As god-like are, making God’s recreation.” I. KNOWE. “Affliction worketh patience: and patience, experience; and experience, hope.” ST. PAUL. “All places that the eye of Heaven visits Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.” SHAKSPERE. The sick-room becomes the scene of intense convictions; and among these, none, it seems to me, is more distinct and powerful than that of the permanent nature of good, and the transient nature of evil. At times I could almost believe that long sickness or other trouble is ordained to prove to us this very point--a point worth any costliness of proof. The truth may pass across the mind of one who has suffered briefly--may occur to him when glancing back over his experience of a short sharp illness or adversity. He may say to himself that his temporary suffering brought him lasting good, in revealing to him the sympathy of his friends, and the close connexion of human happiness with things unseen; but this occasional recognition of the truth is a very different thing from the abiding and unspeakably vivid conviction of it, which arises out of a condition of protracted suffering. It may look like a paradox to say that a condition of permanent pain is that which, above all, proves to one the transient nature of pain; but this is what I do affirm, and can testify. The apparent contradiction lies in the words “permanent pain”--that condition being made up of a series of pains, each of which is annihilated as it departs; whereas all real good has an existence beyond the moment, and is indeed indestructible.