insoluble riddles propounded to mortal comprehension what he calls the fatal decree by which every crime is made to be the agony of many innocent persons as well as of the single guilty one. "Ah!" exclaims Hilda to guilty Miriam, in the story of "Transformation,"- now I understand how the sins of generations past have created an atmosphere of sin for those that follow. While there is a single guilty person in the universe, each innocent one must feel his innocence tortured by that guilt. Your deed, Miriam, has darkened the whole sky!" To apply the lines of a reflective poet,—

""Tis not their own crimes only, men commit;

They harrow them into another's breast,

And they shall reap the growth with bitter pain."

Very forcibly Mr. Isaac Taylor warns us that in almost every event of life the remote consequences vastly outweigh the proximate in actual amount of importance; and he undertakes to show, on principles even of mathematical calculation, that each individual of the human family holds in his hand the centre lines of an interminable web-work, on which are sustained the fortunes of multitudes of his successors; the implicated consequences, if summed together, making up therefore a weight of human weal or woe that is reflected back with an incalculable momentum upon the lot of each. The practical conclusion is that every one is bound to remember that the personal sufferings or peculiar vicissitudes or toils through which he is called to pass are to be estimated and explained only in an immeasurably small proportion if his single welfare is regarded, while their "full price and value are not to be computed unless the drops of the morning dew could be numbered." So the most popular of domestic storytellers expatiates in an early work on the impossibility of wiping off from us, as with a wet cloth, the stains left by the fault of those who are near to us. Another of the tribe, but more “sensational" in subject and style, is keen to show how the influence of a man's evil deed slowly percolates through insidious channels of which he never dreams; how the deed of folly or of guilt is still active for evil when the sinner who

committed it has forgotten his wickedness. "Who shall say where or when the results of one man's evil-doing shall cease? The seed of sin engenders no common root, shooting straight upwards through the earth, and bearing a given crop. It is the germ of a foul running weed, whose straggling suckers travel underground beyond the ken of mortal eye, beyond the power of mortal calculation." And so again the caustic showman of "Vanity Fair," in his last completed work, paused to explain how a culprit's evil behaviour of five and twenty years back, brought present grief and loss of rest to three unoffending persons; and he characteristically utters the wistful wish that we "could all take the punishment for our individual crimes on our individual shoulders," but laments the futility of any such wish, recognising as he does so plainly that when the culprit is condemned to hang, it is those connected with him who have to weep and suffer, and wear piteous mourning in their hearts long after he has jumped off the Tyburn ladder.

We conclude with a suggestive stanza of Mr. Robert Browning's, worth learning by heart in more senses than one : he is speaking of the soul declaring itself by its fruit-the thing it does :

"Be Hate that fruit, or Love that fruit,

It forwards the general deed of Man ;
And each of the many helps to recruit
The life of the race by a general plan,
Each living his own, to boot."

J

SILENT SYMPATHY.

JOB ii. 13.

OB'S friends have long since been a sort of bye-word. But

be it not forgotten that the friendship of Eliphaz, Bil

dad, and Zophar, to the ruined and desolate man of Uz, evidences itself as very genuine in one or two salient points,

before it came to be, what it is apt to be now exclusively con

sidered, all talk.

Before the talk there was prolonged silence; and before the silence there was lamentation of undoubted earnest. Coming from afar to mourn with him, and to comfort him, from afar off they caught sight of him, but so alteredheu, quantum mutatus-that they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent each one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads towards heaven. And then they "sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him; for they saw that his grief was very great."

The sonnet of a Quaker poet has thus far vindicated the sincerity of their friendship, and on the ground of their silent sympathy:

"However ye might err in after-speech,

The mute expression of that voicelesss woe
Whereby ye sought your sympathy to show
With him of Uz, doth eloquently preach,—
Teaching a lesson it were well to teach

Some comforters, of utterance less slow,
Prone to believe that they more promptly know
Grief's mighty depths, and by their words can reach.
Seven days and nights, in stillness as profound
As that of chaos, patiently ye sate

By the heart-stricken and the desolate.

And though your sympathy might fail to sound
The fathomless depth of his dark spirit's wound,
Not less your silence was sublimely great."

In his vivid picture of the desolation of a bereaved husband, Sir Richard Steele goes on to say, "I knew consolation would now be impertinent; and therefore contented myself to sit by him, and condole with him in silence." "Les consolations indiscrètes," says Rousseau, "ne font qu'aigrir les violentes afflictions. L'indifférence et la froideur trouvent aisément des paroles, mais la tristesse et LE SILENCE sont alors le vrai langage de l'amitié." Gray writes to Mason, while yet uncertain whether the latter is already a widower or not,-" If the last struggle be over allow me (at least in idea, for what could I do were I present more than this,) to sit by you in silence, and pity from. my heart, not her who is at rest, but you who lose her." So it

1

committed it has forgotten his wickedness. "Who shall say where or when the results of one man's evil-doing shall cease? The seed of sin engenders no common root, shooting straight upwards through the earth, and bearing a given crop. It is the germ of a foul running weed, whose straggling suckers travel underground beyond the ken of mortal eye, beyond the power of mortal calculation." And so again the caustic showman of Vanity Fair," in his last completed work, paused to explain how a culprit's evil behaviour of five and twenty years back, brought present grief and loss of rest to three unoffending persons; and he characteristically utters the wistful wish that we "could all take the punishment for our individual crimes on our individual shoulders," but laments the futility of any such wish, recognising as he does so plainly that when the culprit is condemned to hang, it is those connected with him who have to weep and suffer, and wear piteous mourning in their hearts long after he has jumped off the Tyburn ladder.

We conclude with a suggestive stanza of Mr. Robe Browning's, worth learning by heart in more senses than he is speaking of the soul declaring itself by its fruit thing it does:

"Be Hate that fruit, or Love that fruit,

It forwards the general deed of Man ;
And each of the many helps to recruit
The life of the race by a general plan,
Each living his own, to boot."

SILENT SYMPATHY.

JOB ii. 13.

OB'S friends have long since been a sort be it not forgotten that the friendship dad, and Zophar, to the ruined and des evidences itself as very genuine in one or t before it came to be, what it is apt to be now