Awonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. a solemn consideration, when i enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! something of the awfulness, even of death itself, is referable to this. no more can i turn the leaves of this dear book that i loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. no more can i look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, i have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. it was appointed that the book should shut with a a spring, for ever and for ever, when i had read but a page. it was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and i stood in ignorance on the shore. my friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which i shall carry in mine to my life's end. in any of the burial-places of this city through which i pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than i am to them? "