But they looked
strange to the London of the morning. They were not of it. Alas
for those who creep to their dens, like the wild beasts when the sun
arises, because the light has shaken them out of the world. All the
horrid phantasms of the Valley of the Shadow of Death that had risen
from the pit with the vaporous night had sunk to escape the arrows
of the sun, once more into its bottomless depth. If any horrid deed
was doing now, how much more horrid in the awful still light of this
first hour of a summer morn! How many evil passions now lay sunk
under the holy waves of sleep! How many heartaches were gnawing
only in dreams, to wake with the brain, and gnaw in earnest again!
And over all brooded the love of the Lord Christ, who is Lord over
all blessed for ever, and shall yet cast death and hell into the
lake of fire--the holy purifying Fate.
I got through my sole engagement--a very dreary one, for surely
never were there stupider young people in the whole region of rank
than those to whom duty and necessity sent me on the Wednesday
mornings of that London season--even with some enjoyment. For the
lessons Falconer had been giving me clung to me and grew on me until
I said thus to myself: 'Am I to believe only for the poor, and not
for the rich? Am I not to bear with conceit even, hard as it is to
teach? for is not this conceit itself the measure as the consequence
of incapacity and ignorance? They cannot help being born stupid,
any more than some of those children in St.
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