Hold Up Your Heads Girls!

Hold the reins of feeling in obedience to what is good and right, no matter what the suffering is which follows. Do you remember how Irma loved the king in that grand struggle for character which Auerbach paints On the Heights, where the full, rich nature of Irma, so capable of loving, so prone to err, yearns for the fulfilment of her longing, yet will not yield an inch of conscience when once she knows it is wrong for her to love? You know she dies struggling, but it is on the heights, where, Goethe tells us, lies repose. There are many and many women martyrs who go to their graves unknown, suffering no pangs of the Inquisition, the gallows, or the guillotine, but tortured by unrequited affections, –by a love which it was not possible to gratify without a loss of principle or a sacrifice of conscience. Is it not better to break one’s heart than to break one’s soul