05Sep1865, My Old Birthday

BOLTON, September 5th, 1865.
—My old birthday, making me 24. I am not quite ½ way to 30 from 20, which proves that I am not so old as might be. And being married has in some ways made me feel younger —partly from the long holyday so much of my new life has been, partly from being the youngest of my new nears and dears (in both which respects things make a great contrast with my Hagley life), but perhaps mostly from the blessed satisfied sense of dependence on one who is as my own self to me, and without whom I should feel lost. Ah ! how difficult it is to keep this great blessedness subordinate to the feeling akin to it, but higher and more divine !—the Love which leads to the Peace that passeth understanding, and for which, over and above all this wealth of human love, one's inner soul is for ever hungering and thirsting.