amid the shame of spreading corruption that the noble protest of Stoic virtue arose, and mingled a melancholy majesty with the empire's fall. Nor is it otherwise with any State that has earned a remembrance of itself. Of every great City, the memorials of fallen heroes and the trophies of dread strife, are among the chief works of art. Every legislative hall is guarded by the figures of those who once braved the dangers of their country's darkest hours. In every national tradition, the popular favourite is the captive king, the chained patriot, the unflinching martyr.

And if it is the great crises of peril that, as they are passing, train a people's character, so is it their reflection in literature that, ages after they are gone, still spreads and perpetuates the ennobling influence. The inspiration that descends on us from the Past, and makes us heirs of accumulated thought and enriched affections, -from whom chiefly does it come? Is it from the uniformly happy and the untempted good? from those who have most realized the lot for which our sentient and intellectual instincts cry aloud? No: but from the central figures of the great tragedies of our humanity; from the conquerors of desolating monsters; from the creators of Law and tamers of the people; from love beyond death, that carried its plaintive music to the shades; from the avengers of wrong; from the martyrs of right; from the missionaries of mercy; from the pass of Thermopyla; from the Milvian bridge; from

the fires of Smithfield; from the waters of Solway; from the cross of Calvary. A world without a contingency or an agony could have no hero and no saint, and enable no Son of Man to discover that he was a Son of God. But for the suspended plot that is folded in every life, history is a dead chronicle of what was known before as well as after; Art sinks into the photograph of a moment that hints at nothing else; and poetry breaks the cords and throws the lyre away. There is no Epic of the certainties; and no lyric without the surprise of sorrow and the sigh of fear. Whatever touches and ennobles us in the lives and in the voices of the past is a divine birth from human doubt and pain. Let then the shadows lie, and the perspective of the light still deepen beyond our view; else, while we walk together, our hearts will never burn within us as we go; and the darkness, as it falls, will deliver us into no hand that is Divine..

XXV.

Best in the Lord.

PSALM XXXVii. 7.

"Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him."

Ir is difficult for the young, and not less so for those who yet remain children in soul, to believe the startling assertion, by religious writers, of the universal misery of men. The sad music of the prophets, the passionate outpourings of an Augustin, the plaintive meditations of a Pascal, and even the tender voice of the Man of Sorrows, appear to them pitched in too deep a key and to wander over notes too far from the brilliancy of joy. The impression is thus very prevalent, that devout persons take melancholy views of things, and throw the unreal shadows from their own minds on the outward scene of their existence. Yet if you will but turn over the page and consult the expression of the same mind in another mood, you may find words transparent with an infinite depth of peace, or dashing on in a torrent of rejoicing. The same Paul who now

wrings his drooping hands and cries, "O wretched man that I am," ere long flings them aloft to exclaim,

Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say unto you, Rejoice!" The same Wesley who now deplores his "vain repentances,"-his life grown "fruitless at its end,"-in lines that bear the trace of tears, then bursts into the triumph of his watch-night songs, and glories in the awful joys of death, in strains that make the passing bell appear to ring with victory. To the inexperienced, both the sadness and the joy seem strange and unintelligible,-vehement and opposite outrages upon truth and reality, the alternations of a tumultuous and ill-regulated mind. And yet they not only co-exist without any tendency to mutual exclusion; but are found in men most remarkable for their calmness and constancy of soul, for the clearness of their purposes, and the force and patience of their will.

The fact is, the childish and the saintly mind form different judgments of life because they look on it from opposite mental stations; the one from a condition of unawakened aspiration, the other from that of aspiration that has found its path and touched its limits: while the great mass of men on whom their observation is made fill an intermediate field, of uneasy and neglected aspiration. The child, gazing at the grown world, and seeing men's outward possessions and not their inward wants, thinks admiringly of their lot,

regards it as a powerful and cheerful thing, and longs to press into it. The saint, discerning an inward want beyond all the measure of outward possession, pities the infinite thirst that feeds only on ashy and juiceless fruits. And in this deep compassion, with which he looks on life, he from time to time includes himself; for though he has reached the head-spring of everliving waters, he is not always there : he wanders from them and often becomes as he was when he knew them not, and is then not less parched and sick at heart than all the rest. The three stages of character are not so separated, that when we have emerged into the higher, we cannot relapse into the lower: we cannot ascend, till the atmosphere of God is spread around us; but to descend in its very midst, we have only to droop the wing. And so it is, that those who have touched the summit know the sunshine and the cloud of every elevation; while they who are yet below listen, as to strange tales, to the glories and the terrors of the height.

The great secret of all peace lies in the ascendency of some strong love. Love, the admiring or reverent direction of the heart on some object,-is the positive power of our life; and on its free action, on its due match against the problems it undertakes, depend the tranquillity and unity of existence. The child is happy, because his love is well proportioned to its ends: it ranges over the little circle of good before his eyes;