France has lived a long time - eight or nine centuries - and yet art in France, too, was derivative up until the 19th Century.

Believe that time is going to help you do what you want.

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,/ Lead thou me on;/ The night is dark, and I am far from home,/ Lead thou me on.

And with the morn those angel faces smile/ Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

To holy people the very name of Jesus is a name to feed upon, a name to transport. His name can raise the dead and transfigure and beautify the living.

As for the comparatively small class of violent crimes against persons, unconnected with any idea of gain, they were almost wholly confined, even in your day, to the ignorant and bestial; and in these days, when education and good manners are not the monopoly of a few, but universal, such atrocities are scarcely ever heard of.