What a fearful loss is this loss of
sight--on the whole the noblest of the senses, and certainly the sense of
all others most serviceable, alike to the working hand and the creative
imagination. The eye may not be so near the fountains of sensibility as
the ear, and no impression reaches the sympathy so profoundly as the
pathos of living speech, but the eye has a far wider range than the ear
and fathoms the heavens and sweeps the earth and sea, whilst the ear hears
distinctly but within a very narrow limit, hardly a stone's throw. When
the eye, then, loses its marvellous faculty and sees no longer the light
of day and the countenances of friends, let the ear do what it can to make
up for the loss by every cheering word of sympathy and hope. In God's
Providence there is a principle of compensation that aims to balance every
privation by some new privilege, as for instance by giving new acuteness
to the senses which are called to do the work of the senses lost. But
genial humanity is the great principle of compensation, and by this God's
children glorify the Father in Heaven. May this volume serve his merciful
will, and may the light shed from the stars of our literary firmament do
something to lessen the night upon every dark path.
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