When death comes they recognize that it is so--why not then
admit it sooner? Activity is only beautiful when it is holy--that is to
say, when it is spent in the service of that which passeth not away.
February 6, 1880.--A feeling article by Edmond Scherer on the death of
Bersot, the director of the "Ecole Normale," a philosopher who bore like
a stoic a terrible disease, and who labored to the last without a
complaint.... I have just read the four orations delivered over his
grave. They have brought the tears to my eyes. In the last days of this
brave man everything was manly, noble, moral, and spiritual. Each of the
speakers paid homage to the character, the devotion, the constancy, and
the intellectual elevation of the dead. "Let us learn from him how to
live and how to die." The whole funeral ceremony had an antique dignity.
February 7, 1880.--Hoar-frost and fog, but the general aspect is bright
and fairylike, and has nothing in common with the gloom in Paris and
London, of which the newspapers tell us.
This silvery landscape has a dreamy grace, a fanciful charm, which are
unknown both to the countries of the sun and to those of coal-smoke. The
trees seem to belong to another creation, in which white has taken the
place of green. As one gazes at these alleys, these clumps, these groves
and arcades, these lace-like garlands and festoons, one feels no wish
for anything else; their beauty is original and self-sufficing, all the
more because the ground powdered with snow, the sky dimmed with mist,
and the smooth soft distances, combine to form a general scale of color,
and a harmonious whole, which charms the eye.
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