ABSTRACT
BRIDGES was taking life hard in those years. The passionate sympathy with oppression which flamed out all through his life, was not confined to the Lancashire operatives. He was entering with equal intensity into the sorrows of his friends. “ I have had so few thoughts and cares except for what was passing around me,” he writes to Harrison in 1861, “ that I have but little to say of myself. Those who stood on Calvary I imagine thought but little of others or themselves.” Had it not been for his friendship with Harrison, to whom he could pour out his heart, he might well have broken down completely. Both were at this time in deep anxiety as to the mental state of a mutual friend who had collapsed under nervous strain. “ Since I saw you,” Bridges writes, “ the object of my anxiety has not diminished. It is to me dreadful. I heap vain reproaches on myself for not having written to him oftener. How I wish I could think that he had taken refuge from despair in Catholicism. Years ago I know that used to be before him. It would have been well had it been possible for me and others to have encouraged it. As it is, the prevailing thought with me is the dreadful agony which a nature like his must have gone through. Strange and bitter are the ways of Destiny. Riddle never to be read—darkness never to be pierced—mystery never to be unveiled! This is the valley of the shadow of death. What is left us then? Love is left and duty.
