““Alas ! How few of Nature's faces are left alone to gladden us with their beauty ! The cares, and sorrows, and the hungerings, of the world, change them as they change hearts; and it is only when those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven's surface clear. It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early life; so calm, so peaceful, do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin's side in awe, and see the Angel even upon earth.””
![“[T]hey are much to be pitied who have not ... been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.” quote by Jane Austen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/d07/jane-austen-39_early-life_t-hey-are-much-to-be-pitied-who-have-not_320677.jpg)