points out, that a danger which approaches, but wheels away— which threatens, but finally forbears to strike-is more interesting by much on a distant retrospect than the danger which accomplishes its mission. "The Alpine precipice, down which many pilgrims have fallen, is passed without much attention; but that precipice, within one inch of which a traveller has passed unconsciously in the dark, first tracing his peril along the snowy margin on the next morning, becomes invested with an attraction of horror for all who hear the story." In another of his books, and the most celebrated of them all, the same impassioned master of English prose, recites the thoughts that arose within him, at a crisis in his youthful life, on the suggestive opening of that beautiful collect, "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord!" in which the great shadows of night are made symbolically significant-those great powers, night and darkness, that belong to aboriginal chaos, being made representative of the perils that, unseen, continually menace poor afflicted human nature. "With deepest sympathy I accompanied the prayer against the perils of darkness, perils that I seemed to see, in the ambush of mid night solitude, brooding around the beds of sleeping nations; perils from even worse forms of darkness shrouded within the recesses of blind human hearts; perils from temptations weaving unseen snares for our footing." As Marcello has it, in Beddoes' tragedy, "Each minute of man's safety he does walk With admirable subtlety and suggestiveness, Mr. Hawthorne illustrates this subject in that fantasiestück of his, called "David Swan." A young man of that name falls asleep on the roadside, of a summer's day, and we see, what he sees not, nor dreams of happening to him, a series of incidents that go near to alter the current of his being, and very near, in one instance, to stop altogether its earthly course. When he awakes from that sound sleep, and hies him cheerily homeward, he knows not, nor ever will know, in this world at least, that while he slumbered, all in one brief hour, wealth was all but made over to him by one heirless passer-by, and death all but dealt him by two reckless ruffians. They were interrupted, and left him, and he never was to know of the narrow escape. The moral of the fantasy is, that sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen. And the moralist's query ensues, Does it not argue a superintending Providence, that while viewless and unexpected events thrust themselves continually athwart our path, there should still be regularity enough in mortal life to render foresight even partially available? The moral of "David Swan" is implicitly conveyed in that passage in "Waverley" which relates Colonel Gardiner's unconscious escape from the raised and pointed weapon of the Highlander, Callum Beg. An incident that appeals to his superstition makes the intending slayer drop his piece; and "Colonel Gardiner," we read, "unconscious of the danger he had escaped, turned his horse round, and rode slowly back to the front of his regiment." So with Mrs. Hilyard, in "Salem Chapel," on the evening of the secret interview upon the chapel steps. A hidden witness there is of that interview, who, however, sees not the gesture of her companion which bodes, and almost involves, a fatal, a murderous issue. "But even Mrs. Hilyard herself never knew how near, how very near, she was at that moment to the unseen world." Or glance, again, at the Azteca, in Southey's "Madoc," gliding like a snake to where Caradoc lay sleeping-all unconscious of peril, 'as happy, and happily unconscious, David Swan : "Sweetly slept he, and pleasant were his dreams His victim, and the power of vengeance gave That instant, o'er the Briton's unseen harp The gale of morning passed, and swept its strings It seemed no earthly tune. The savage man He thought that some protecting spirit watched 66 To Cremona went together, in seeming amity, the Emperor Sigismund and Pope John XXIII., and there an incident had nearly taken place, which, as the historian of Latin Christianity says, might, by preventing the Council of Constance, have changed the fortunes of the world. Gabrino Fondoli, who from podestâ had become tyrant of Cremona, entertained his distinguished guests with sumptuous hospitality. He led them up the lofty tower to survey the rich and spacious plains of Lombardy. On his deathbed Fondoli confessed the sin, of which he deeply repented, that he resisted the temptation, and had not hurled pope and emperor down, and so secured himself an immortal name." Pope and emperor on the tower-top were as little inclined to suspect how closely the shadow of death was then and there overshadowing them, as they would have been able to comprehend the ultimate repentance of the intending murderer, not for having intended murder, but for having not carried his intention out. It is one of Young's night thoughts that "the farthest from the fear, are often nearest to the stroke of fate." Often the stroke menaces them unawares, but after all is not dealt; and to the last they are unaware that on such a day, and at such a minute, there was but a step between them and death. Quid quisque vitet, says Horace, nunquam homini satis cautum est, in horas. The ignorance of what is impending is bliss, in a certain sense. Just as "The kid from the pen, and the lamb from the fold, R It falls ;-the frail thread of their being is riven; Mais qu'il me soit permis de ne le savoir pas, is the wish of some in regard even of escaped peril. Scott vividly illustrates in "Rokeby" the position of unconscious and therefore unconcerned borderers on the grave; it is where Bertram creeps on hands and knees through the spreading birch and hazels, and takes aim at Redmond, and twice Matilda comes between the carabine and Redmond's breast, "just ere the spring his finger pressed ;" and the interruption of Guy Denzil's approach makes the ruffian retire, rê infectâ : "They whom dark Bertram, in his wrath, Their thoughts to one sad subject lent, When Heaven the murderer's arm restrained; NO LEISURE. ST. MARK vi. 31. HAT must have been a busy time with the apostles, THA much serving, worn with many anxieties, and kept in unrest by continual demands on their services, when the Divine Masterknowing their frame and remembering that they were dustbade them come by themselves "apart into a desert place, and rest a while; for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat." Our own age has been rightly described as one of stimulus and high pressure: we live as it were our lives out fast; effect is everything; results produced at once; something to show, and something that may tell. "The folio of patient years is replaced by the pamphlet that stirs men's curiosity to-day, and to-morrow is forgotten." Or as an eminent reviewer puts it-writing to the same effect as the eminent divine just quotedwithout grudging to contemporary productions the applause which they receive, or the interest which they excite, thoughtful minds cannot see them with complacency obscuring by their brilliance, or perhaps their "glare," the more temperate and wholesome light of the elder classics of our land. "At no moment in the intellectual progress of England has repose ever been more needful, if the literature of the present century be to take its place among its great antecessors." For want of repose our prose is declared on the same authority to be growing turgid, our verse empty or inflated; and as a good cooling regimen is required to correct these exorbitances, nothing would rejoice our censor more than to be assured, on the credit of sound publishers' statistics, that the number of new books was diminishing, while that of re-editions of old books was on the increase. Dr. Arnold, we are told, once preached a sermon to the boys at Rugby against taking in the monthly numbers of "Nicholas Nickleby," by way of protest against systematic and uninterrupted excitement. 'Society keeps up as much excitement as it can. It wants its new number of something to appear incessantly. There is no rest or repose, and one subject of thought succeeds another faster than wave succeeds wave." A rather ironical apology for dull sermons sets up at least this plea in their behalf: that so easy is it for a man who lives in such a society never to be alone with himself, that a compulsory half-hour of quietude at a wakeful time of the day, in a place which recalls to him the most solemn thoughts, is no slight advantage. 66 La Bruyère, two centuries ago, complained of French society in his day, that there was no getting any one to abide quietly at home, and there in patience possess his soul, and make sure to himself that he had one. All was hurry and flurry. Not to be excitedly busy was to be idle. But that the philosopher denied. A wise man turns his leisure to account. He is not idle who devotes his leisure to tranquil meditation, and con |