driving their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy of blue smoke seems like a sort of life-breath: for always, of its own unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love; thus does the little dwelling-place of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts, become for us an individual, almost a person. But what thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in still stands there, if our loving ones still dwell there, if our buried ones there slumber!

CONDUCT.

But indeed conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into conduct. Nay, properly, conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch as all speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices: only by a felt indubitable certainty of experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that "Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action." On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: "Do the duty which lies nearest thee," which thou knowest to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

LIGHT, THE BEGINNING OF ALL CREATION.

But it is with man's soul as it was with nature: the beginning of creation is-light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost soul, as once over the wild-weltering chaos, it is spoken: Let there be light! Ever to the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and

least. The mad primeval discord is hushed; the rudelyjumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate firmaments: deep silent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed world.

COMMUNION OF SOULS.

Mystical, more than magical, is that communing of soul with soul, both looking heavenward: here properly soul first speaks with soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call union, mutual love, society, begin to be possible. How true is that of Novalis: " It is certain, my belief gains quite infinitely the moment I can convince another mind thereof!" Gaze thou in the face of thy brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire of kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of anger; feel how thy own so quiet soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of embracing love, or of deadly-grappling hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, through all the thickplied hulls of our earthly life; how much more when it is of the divine life we speak, and inmost me is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost me!

SILENCE AND SECRECY.

Silence and secrecy! Altars might still be raised to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship. Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they

were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing thought; but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, schweigen ist golden (speech is silvern, silence is golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.

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Bees will not work except in darkness; thought will not work except in silence: neither will virtue work except in secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of those secrets known to all." Is not shame (schaam) the soil of all virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like other plants, virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower will glad thee. O my friends, when we view the fair clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example, the marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance, and hues of heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish in!

Two MEN ALONE HONORABLE.

Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn craftsman that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weathertanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face

of a man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of labor: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread.

A second man I honor, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavoring towards inward harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavors, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavor are one: when we can name him artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, who with heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that we have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality? These two, in all their degrees, I honor, all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth.

Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness.

THE POOR MAN.

It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: we must all toil or steal (howsoever we name our stealing),

which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the heavens send sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of rest envelops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, fear and indignation bear him company. Alas, while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated! Alas, was this too a breath of God; bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded! -That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does. The miserable fraction of science which our united mankind, in a wide universe of nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?

(From "Past and Present.")

FAIR DAY'S WAGES FOR FAIR DAY'S WORK.

Fair day's wages for fair day's work! exclaims a sarcastic man: Alas, in what corner of this planet, since Adam first awoke on it, was that ever realised? The day's wages of John Milton's day's work, named Paradise Lost and Milton's Works, were ten pounds paid by installments, and a rather close escape from death on the gallows. Consider that: it is no rhetorical flourish; it is an authentic, altogether quiet fact-emblematic, quietly documentary of a whole world of such, ever since human history began. Oliver Cromwell quitted his farming; undertook a Hercules' labor and lifelong wrestle with that Lernean hydra-coil, wide as England,