Perhaps the most
painful of all the forms in which change confronts us is in the
increased infirmities and diminished graces which after long
absence we observe in those we love; the failure of power and
vitality in the outward frame, the lessened vividness of the
intellect we have admired, strike us with a sharp surprise of
distress, and it is startling to have revealed suddenly to us, in
the condition of others, how rapidly, powerfully, and unobservedly
time has been dealing with ourselves. But those who believe in
eternity should be able to accept time, and the ruin of the altar
from which the flame leaps up to heaven signifies little.
My father and I went to visit Macdonald's collection of sculpture
to-day. I was very much pleased with some of the things; there are
some good colossal figures, and an exquisite statue of a kneeling
girl, that charmed me greatly; there are some excellent busts, too.
How wonderfully that irrevocable substance assumes the soft, round
forms of life! The color in its passionless purity (absence of
color, I suppose I should say) is really harder than the substance
itself of marble.
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