“His father could not have vanished like a sea-bubble on the sand! To have known a great man – perhaps I do not mean such a man as my reader may be thinking of – is to have some assurance of immortality. One of the best of men said to me once that he did not feel any longing after immortality, but, when he thought of certain persons, he could not for a moment believe they had ceased. He had beheld the lovely, believed therefore in the endless.”
