There is a beauty in this review of life, in thus living over again the years gone by, that affords the richest comfort to the soul.” “Is it then,” queried I, “by thus asking pleasures of an active and happy past, that you have maintained your freshness of mind and brilliancy of spirits? In another, the same things would have caused melancholy and desponding regrets, by exhibiting in contrast a hopeless and pleasureless future.” “My future,” she pleasantly replied, “is not hopeless, but were it even so, the consequences could not be so sad; neither will it ever be more void of amusement than the present, which is full of enjoyment. It is an old Spanish maxim, well suited to the temper of the Spaniard, that ‘he who loseth wealth, loseth much; he who loseth a friend, loseth more; but he who loseth his spirits, loseth all.’ With so fatal a loss, the mind sinks deep into despair, and the heart finds nothing to cheer it. Our natural organization, however, is happily provided with guards and barriers against it, and to those who are not permitted to mingle in society, this retrospective life is the best and noblest of them all. There is no reliable middle course in affliction, and if you guard against the pressure of unfavorable circumstances, you not merely avoid the dangers of despondency, but also increase your capacities for enjoyment. Your heart will mellow and expand by sickness, and whatever coldness or indifference characterized it, will yield before the power of sympathy. The ill in your nature will be imperceptibly destroyed, and the good remain standing alone. Where before you were quick to censure, you will manifest generous forbearance, and even positive injuries will be forgotten and forgiven. How well is this state and condition adapted for a review of the past! Whilst it causes you to extend friendship to those whom you hated, it attaches you so closely to those whom you loved that your very being seems to become blended with theirs. In your adoration of them, their lives are made part of your own, and though they may not always claim an interest so intense, they afford equal enjoyment. You ponder upon their adventures, contrasting them with your own, and each separate incident affords new matter for the employment of your thoughts. If, then, I have my own life spread out before me, and the lives of those who are nearest and dearest to me, have I not sources of enjoyment sufficient to do much more than maintain my present spirits and buoyancy.”