MARHAM.

For our souls live in God far more safely than thoughts in the mind; because in him there is no forgetfulness. And from what you have been saying, I think this: that if the Past lives on in us, we may well hope ourselves to live on in God.

AUBIN.

On account of our souls, we might perhaps have feared a little, if what was good in Athens had perished; but it did not. The old ages are gone by, but the spirit even of them did not go into nothingness; nor will my soul, then, ever, by any likelihood. In the rise and fall of empires there is Divine purpose. There has been growth in the successive forms of civilization, in the Greek over the Egyptian, in the Roman over the Greek, and in Christian Rome over Pagan Rome, and in every age of the Christian world over what has been before.

MARHAM.

O Oliver! ours has been the midsummer of the world's history, to live in.

AUBIN.

There is in us and about us what is the science, the wisdom, the religion, and the worth of all the centuries since Adam. Yes, in my character there are the effects of Paul's journey to Damascus, and of the meeting of King John and the barons at Runnymede. There is in my soul

the seriousness of the many conflicts, and famines, and pestilences of early English times. And of my enthusiasm, some of the warmth is from fiery words that my forefathers thrilled to, in the times of the Commonwealth and the Reformation. There is in me what has come of the tenderness with which mothers nursed their children ages ago, and something that may be traced to the resolute talk of Cromwell and his cousin Hampden; and there is that in me which is holy, and which began from a forty days' fast in a wilderness in Judea, now eighteen hundred years since.

MARHAM.

In a sense, all the ages that have ever been are now; they are with us now.

AUBIN.

The Past, the infinite Past! My soul was born of it, and I am spirit of its spirit. O, as I look back at the Past, and think what it is to me, I feel as Apollo did as he gazed upon Mnemo- syne, and said,

Mute thou remainest - Mute!

Yet I can read

A wondrous lesson in thy silent face;

Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.

Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,

Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,

Creations and destroyings, all at once

Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,
And deify me, as if some blithe wine
Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
And so become immortal.

O, the way of my soul's growth argues eternity for her life! The Past! as I think of it, and how wonderfully I was born of it, I do feel in me a something infinite, that persuades me of my immortality. Thou glorious Past, thou suffering Past, thou dear, dear Past!

we men,

I can read

A wondrous lesson in thy silent face.

MARHAM.

It seemed to die every day, but it did not. And we seem to die, but we do not. It is only to one another that we die; for we do not to God, nor to the angels.

AUBIN.

God! this life of ours is much too wonderful to be despaired of, even at its end.

MARHAM.

And through Christ, that end has itself become so hopeful, - so divinely hopeful!

CHAPTER XIX.

A trance of high and solemn bliss
From purest ether came;

'Mid such a heavenly scene as this,

Death is an empty name. -JOHN WILSON.

MARHAM.

A DELIGHTFUL day, is not it, Oliver ?

Yes, uncle.

AUBIN.

But how calm it is. It is so profoundly quiet. A blessed day it is; and the great peace of it reaches into the soul.

MARHAM.

It does; and it feels like the peace of God; and so it must be, in some way; for a troubled spirit never feels this calmness of nature.

AUBIN.

That is true; and, uncle, I would widen what you have said, and say, that when the soul is most nearly what it ought to be, it is then fullest. of faith in what it will be.

When we are most

heavenly in temper, we are in belief surest of being immortal. Our highest moods are higher than any fling of death's dart.

MARHAM.

It is the goodness of God that exempts our

best experiences from the taint of the charnel

house.

But you seem as though you had another explanation, Oliver.

AUBIN.

No, uncle, I have not. The mind is like a harp, in which many strings thrill, on one being struck; and the feeling of the beautiful and that of the infinite are nigh one another. What I mean is, that beauty is to the feeling as though it were everlasting.

MARHAM.

Evanescent, surely, Oliver.

For of all beauty

there is one emblem, — the grass, which is in the field to-day, and to-morrow in the oven.

AUBIN.

Trees please me much to look at, and walk amongst, and sit under. But that they will rot and fall never troubles me.

MARHAM.

That is because most trees are as long-lived as we men, and some are a hundred times longer. But over and over again we see the flowers fade. And the more we like them, the more decaying this world must feel.

AUBIN.

No; but the fresher and the newer. For do not the flowers, when they have gone out of blossom, come into it again? What decays in flowers is the pulp, which is not what you care for;