And we are left in that old carven room, And she begins to sing;

The open casement quivers in the breeze,

And one large musk-rose leans its dewy grace
Into the chamber, like a happy face,
And round it swim the bees;

I know not what I said-what she replied
Lives, like eternal sunshine, in my heart;
And then I murmured, Oh! we never part,
My love, my life, my bride!

And silence o'er us, after that great bliss,

Fell like a welcome shadow-and I heard The far woods sighing, and a summer bird Singing amid the trees;

The sweet bird's happy song, that streamed around,
The murmur of the woods, the azure skies,
Were graven on my heart, though ears and eyes
Marked neither sight nor sound.

She sleeps in peace beneath the chancel stone,

But ah! so clearly is the vision seen,

The dead seem raised, or Death has never been, Were I not here alone.

This is great art in its power of picturing a memory of the heart. Let us notice some of the beauties. The lover is pale because he is afraid, anxious; he is going to ask a question and he does not know how she may answer him. All this was

long ago, years and years ago, but the strong emotions of that morning leave their every detail painted in remembrance, with strange vividness. After all those years the man still recollects the appearance of the room, the sunshine entering, and the crimson rose looking into the room from the garden, with bees humming round it. Then after the question had been asked and happily answered, neither could speak for joy; and because of the silence all the sounds of nature outside became almost painfully distinct. Now he remembers how he heard in that room the sound of the wind in far-away trees, the singing of a bird-he also remembers all the colours and the lights of the day. But it was very, very long ago, and she is dead. Still, the memory is so clear and bright in his heart that it is as if time had stood still, or as if she had come back from the grave. Only one thing assures him that it is but a memory -he is alone.

Returning now to the subject of love's illusion in itself, let me remind you that the illusion does not always pass away-not at all. It passes away in every case of happy union, when it has become no longer necessary to the great purposes of nature. But in case of disappointment, loss, failure to win the maiden desired, it often happens that the ideal image never fades away, but persistently haunts the mind through life, and is capable thus of making even the most successful life unhappy.

Sometimes the result of such disappointment may
be to change all a man's ideas about the world,
about life, about religion; and everything remains
darkened for him. Many a young person disap-
pointed in love begins to lose religious feeling
from that moment, for it seems to him, simply
because he happens to be unfortunate, that the
universe is all wrong. On the other hand the suc-
cessful lover thinks that the universe is all right;
he utters his thanks to the gods, and feels his faith
in religion and human nature greater than before.
I do not at this moment remember any striking
English poem illustrating this fact; but there is a
pretty little
poem in French by Victor Hugo show-
ing well the relation between successful love and
religious feeling in simple minds. Here is an
English translation of it. The subject is simply a
walk at night, the girl-bride leaning upon the arm
of her husband; and his memory of the evening
is thus expressed:

The trembling arm I pressed
Fondly; our thoughts confessed
Love's conquest tender;
God filled the vast sweet night,
Love filled our hearts; the light
Of stars made splendour.

Even as we walked and dreamed,
'Twixt heaven and earth, it seemed

Our souls were speaking;

The stars looked on thy face;
Thine eyes through violet space
The stars were seeking.

And from the astral light
Feeling the soft sweet night.
Thrill to thy soul,

Thou saidst: "O God of Bliss,

Lord of the Blue Abyss,

Thou madest the whole!"

And the stars whispered low
To the God of Space, "We know,

God of Eternity,

Dear Lord, all Love is Thine,

Even by Love's Light we shine!
Thou madest Beauty!"

Of course here the religious feeling itself is part of the illusion, but it serves to give great depth and beauty to simple feeling. Besides, the poem illustrates one truth very forcibly-namely, that when we are perfectly happy all the universe appears to be divine and divinely beautiful; in other words, we are in heaven. On the contrary, when we are very unhappy the universe appears to be a kind of hell, in which there is no hope, no joy, and no gods to pray to.

But the special reason I wished to call attention to Victor Hugo's lyric is that it has that particular quality called by philosophical critics "cosmic emotion." Cosmic emotion means the highest quality

of human emotion. The word "cosmos" signifies the universe-not simply this world, but all the hundred millions of suns and worlds in the known heaven. And the adjective "cosmic" means, of course, "related to the whole universe." Ordinary emotion may be more than individual in its relations. I mean that your feelings may be moved by the thought or the perception of something relating not only to your own life but also to the lives of many others. The largest form of such ordinary emotion is what would be called national feeling, the feeling of your own relation to the whole nation or the whole race. But there is higher emotion even than that. When you think of yourself emotionally not only in relation to your own country, your own nation, but in relation to all humanity, then you have a cosmic emotion of the third or second order. I say "third or second," because whether the emotion be second or third rate depends very much upon your conception of humanity as One. But if you think of yourself in relation not to this world only but to the whole universe of hundreds of millions of stars and planets-in relation to the whole mystery of existence-then you have a cosmic emotion of the highest order. Of course there are degrees even in this; the philosopher or the metaphysician will probably have a finer quality of cosmic emotion than the poet or the artist is able to have. But lovers very often, according to their degree