for us, and is a feeling which it is wholesome for us to walk about in for a while.

MARHAM.

I think, Oliver, that the more one feels what this world is precisely, the surer one is of its being to be explained in a way not known of yet,— a way that will justify want and agony even to goodness itself. And thus so many objects about us, that are sad to look at now, will turn in the future to recollections wonderful, and perhaps blessed, as you said this afternoon. Yes, Oliver, to the eyes of faith how all things change, and sad things look solemn, and dark things look brightening, and bright things look brighter! And then, too, there are times, not those of our most virtuous moods certainly, when our best thoughts feel empty, and when events move us only to despair.

AUBIN.

Just as a house is a home only to what domestic feeling is in a man, so very largely this world is God's world only to what godly feelings are in us. And it is only to my Christian feeling that the world feels

MARHAM.

What inspires you with courage, and hope, and trust?

AUBIN..

Yes, uncle. There have been times when to

me nature has been meaningless; and there have been men to whom it has been disheartening. And well I remember the time at which nature began in my eyes to grow good with the goodness of God. It was like as when a white cloud grows golden with the rising sun. And now to my trustful, Christian heart, nature is so that whatever is in harmony with it I can be well contented to become, even though it might possibly prove to be nothing. In many a beautiful scene, on a summer's day, it is as though it were said to me, "Feel now how blessed are the Divine hands, into which it will be thine sometime to commend thy spirit." And now, to-night, is not it as though God had darkened the world for me to feel him the better in it? And what are those stars but the thousand eyes of God's love watching me? And the soft west wind, is it not what my soul might well go forth upon calmly and hopefully?

MARHAM.

The life of all things else is our life.

AUBIN.

And what the sun rises in and sets in, our souls

may well be trusted to last on in.

The morrow mind of God,

of the world is a purpose in the and so is the great to-morrow of my soul. And I can be well contented to have my life subside on the bosom of him in whom the day died away

this evening so beautifully, and in whom it will begin again in the morning so grandly.

MARHAM.

Almost all things encourage the faith of a thoughtful and believing mind. It is easy to believe that the souls of the righteous will shine on through death, since they have, for the life of their lives, that God in whom sun and moon and stars last on through change, and eclipse, and ages.

AUBIN.

My soul will live on in God, through death, like a thought that lasts on in the mind through sleep, and forgetfulness, and threescore years and ten perhaps.

MARHAM.

Yes, I live in God, and shall eternally. It is his hand upholds me now; and death will be but an uplifting of me into his bosom.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

And may it not be hoped, that, placed by age
In like removal, tranquil though severe,

We are not so removed for utter loss,

But for some favor, suited to our need?

What more than that the severing should confer
Fresh power to commune with the invisible world,
And hear the mighty stream of tendency
Uttering, for elevation of our thought,
A clear, sonorous voice, inaudible
To the vast multitude, whose doom it is
To run the giddy round of vain delight,
Or fret and labor on the plain below?

WORDSWORTH.

MARHAM.

VERY much I like it. But I am another man than I was when I was there thirty years ago. And the people there are almost all other than I used to know. The land slopes as it used to do, upwards to the brow of a hill, and down towards a brook. The brook runs on, stony at the bottom in one place, and gravelly in another; and the grass alongside it is long and green, and with flowers in it. glove and the water-lily.

Prettily grow the fox-
And all day long, while

the daisies are looking up at the sun, the brook flows on, and here and there it gurgles; and so it does in the dark, all the night through, and while

the daisies are shut.

The water runs there, and

the grass grows there, and the flowers blossom there, and smell there; and the sun shines there, and midnight is dark there, and there all things are as they used to be. Only the men that were there once are not there now.

AUBIN.

And how did you feel? You had old thoughts come back to you, and old feelings. How did life feel to you there ?

MARHAM.

Oliver, it felt to me there what it does to me too often, perhaps. What is it to live? It is to grow older. It is to have more pain, or else more fear of pain. It is to have some friends grow cold, and others die. It is to learn more and more reasons, every year, for being willing to die.

AUBIN.

So it is; and not lamentably so either. For to live thoughtfully is to advance in life, and feel ourselves being laid hold of by the powers of the world to come.

MARHAM.

A grand phrase is that of St. Paul's.

AUBIN.

So it is. And, uncle, did not you feel more faith, as well as more resignation, when you found yourself an old man, where you used to live as a youth?