This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has arisen that some people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non-development of his powers. She therefore watches over human education. Now, the word _educo_, with the penultimate short, was derived (by a process often exemplified in the crystallization of languages) from the word _educo_, with the penultimate long. Whatsoever _educes_ or developes--_educates_. By the education of Levana, therefore, is meant--not the poor machinery that moves by spelling-books and grammars, but that mighty system of central forces hidden in the deep bosom of human life, which by passion, by strife, by temptation, by the energies of resistance, works for ever upon children--resting not day or night, any more than the mighty wheel of day and night themselves, whose moments, like restless spokes, are glimmering[12] for ever as they revolve.
If, then, _these_ are the ministries by which Levana works, how profoundly must she reverence the agencies of grief! But you, reader! think--that children generally are not liable to grief such as mine. There are two senses in the word _generally_--the sense of Euclid where it means _universally_, (or in the whole extent of the _genus_,) and a foolish sense of this world where it means _usually_. Now I am far from saying that children universally are capable of grief like mine. But there are more than you ever heard of, who die of grief in this island of ours. I will tell you a common case. The rules of Eton require that a boy on the _foundation_ should be there twelve years: he is superannuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at that age not unfrequently die. I speak of what I know. The complaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; but _that_ it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has killed more than ever have been counted amongst its martyrs.
Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the powers that shake man's heart: therefore it is that she doats upon grief. "These ladies," said I softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was conversing, "these are the Sorrows; and they are three in number, as the _Graces_ are three, who dress man's life with beauty; the Parcæ are three, who weave the dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom always with colours sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the _Furies_ are three, who visit with retributions called on the other side of the grave offences that walk upon this; and once even the _Muses_ were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say _now_; but in Oxford I said--"one of whom I know, and the others too surely I _shall_ know." For already, in my fervent youth, I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters. These sisters--by what name shall we call them?
