For myself, however, the storm
which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge of a long
fair-weather--the premature sufferings which I had paid down to have been
accepted as a ransom for many years to come, as a price of long immunity
from sorrow; and if again I walked in London a solitary and contemplative
man (as oftentimes I did), I walked for the most part in serenity and
peace of mind. And although it is true that the calamities of my
noviciate in London had struck root so deeply in my bodily constitution,
that afterwards they shot up and flourished afresh, and grew into a
noxious umbrage that has overshadowed and darkened my latter years, yet
these second assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude more
confirmed, with the resources of a maturer intellect, and with
alleviations from sympathising affection--how deep and tender!
Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years that were far asunder
were bound together by subtle links of suffering derived from a common
root. And herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness of human
desires, that oftentimes on moonlight nights, during my first mournful
abode in London, my consolation was (if such it could be thought) to gaze
from Oxford Street up every avenue in succession which pierces through
the heart of Marylebone to the fields and the woods; for _that_, said I,
travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which lay part in light and
part in shade, "_that_ is the road to the North, and therefore to, and if
I had the wings of a dove, _that_ way I would fly for comfort.
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