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[239] look round for a baby, which, when discovered, must always be won at once into her arms. If it was dirty, she would have been glad to bathe it; if ill, to heal it. It would not have seemed to her anything worthy the name of love, to seek only those who were wholesome and clean. Like the young girl in Holmes's most touching poem, she would have claimed as her own the outcast child whom nurses and physicians had abandoned.
‘Take her, dread Angel! Break in love
This bruised reed and make it thine!’
No voice descended from above,
But Avis answered, “She is mine!”

When I think of the self-devotion which the human heart can contain — of those saintly souls that are in love with sorrow, and that yearn to shelter all weakness and all grief — it inspires an unspeakable confidence that there must also be an instinct of parentage beyond this human race, a heart of hearts, cor cordium. As we all crave something to protect, so we long to feel ourselves protected. We are all infants before the Infinite; and as I turned from that cottage window to the resplendent sky, it was easy to fancy that mute

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