as because the presence of a fellow sufferer at such times calls forth condolence, when that of one who continues in the sunshine of fortune might provoke an envious self-comparison, which is the commonest of all evil feelings. But it is not so with those keener griefs which affect us in our domestic relations. The heart-wounds which are inflicted by our fellow creatures, are apt to fester: those which we receive in the dispensations of Almighty wisdom and the course of nature, are remedial and sanative. There are some fruits which must be punctured before they can ripen kindly; and there are some hearts which require an analogous process. [Footnote 2: INCERTI AUCTORIS.] [Footnote 3: SHAKESPEARE.] He and Margaret had been all in all to each other, and the child was too young to understand her loss, and happily just too old to feel it as an infant would have felt it. In the sort of comfort which he derived from this sense of loneliness, there was nothing that resembled the pride of stoicism; it was a consideration that tempered his feelings and assisted in enabling him to control them, but it concentrated and perpetuated them. Whether the souls of the departed are cognizant of what passes on earth, is a question which has been variously determined by those who have reasoned concerning the state of the dead. Thomas Burnet was of opinion that they are not, because they “rest from their labours.” And South says, “it is clear that God sometimes takes his Saints out of the world for this very cause, that they may not see and know what happens in it. For so says God to King Josiah, ‘Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace; neither shall thy eyes see all the evil that I will bring upon this place, and the inhabitants thereof.’” This he adduces as a conclusive argument against the invocation of Saints, saying the “discourse would have been hugely absurd and inconsequent, if so be the saints separation from the body gave them a fuller and a clearer prospect into all the particular affairs and occurrences that happen here upon earth.” Aristotle came to an opposite conclusion; he thought not only that the works of the deceased follow them, but that the dead are sensible of the earthly consequences of those works, and are affected in the other world by the honour or the reproach which is justly ascribed to their memory in this. So Pindar represents it as one of the enjoyments of the blessed, that they behold and rejoice in the virtues of their posterity: Ἔστι δε καί τι θανόντεσσιν μέρος Καννόμον ἑρδόμενον, Κατακρύπτει δ᾽οὐ κόνις Συγγόνων κεδνὰν χάριν.[4] [Footnote 4: PINDAR.]