the sound is, "Thus far on through Time." And the hopeful thought it makes in us is, “And so much nigher to Eternity and Heaven." So we will hope. MARHAM. AUBIN. And out of pure hearts, confidence in the future cannot be too great. Because, what is hope ? It is what is most worthy of belief, by its very nature. For in hoping rightly, all that is best in us yearns together for the infinite, love and reverence, and conscience, and the feeling of the beautiful. word; they would not use it if they could help it; nor would the Romans, though less sensitive. And we, we Christians speak it like an unnatural word. And yet the thing itself, when it happens, will be quite a matter of course; and for us Christians, there will be no sting in it; and all the bitterness of it will be found to have been drunk by us long ago. For our life is an act of dying; and we die just as fast as we live. The pleasures of boyhood, holidays and half-holidays, climbing trees, rolling down green hill-sides, looking for birdsnests, playing with snow, chasing one another, especially in the twilight, sporting in the water, and swimming, all this I have been dead to long, long. Many a purpose of station and fame, that was once life of my life, I am dead to. Every month I die to some old object, or hope, or delight; and every midnight do I die to a yesterday. MARHAM. Ay, in the midst of life we are in death; we are; and it is most true. AUBIN. But not most melancholy, nor as much so as your tone, uncle. For if life is so very like death, then death cannot be so very unlike life. MARHAM. What is that? how is that? AUBIN. It is quite a triumph, is not it? — detecting the nothingness of death, this way. I will show you how it is. Our daily death MARHAM. our daily Why, Oliver, what an expression, death! But it is a true one. And if we lived in the feeling of it, we should not be afraid of death long. If only men did die daily, then they would not die at all. But this they will not do. But yet, whether we think it or not, we become dead to many and many an object. This is our mortality. AUBIN. And no such very sad thing. You cannot leap over gates, and across ditches, and up to the boughs of trees, as you used to do. It is no time with you now to undress yourself on the bank of a river and jump into it, careless about the depth; you cannot run a mile in seven minutes MARHAM. No, I am sure I cannot. AUBIN. or any of those Well, but do you want to do it, other things? No, you do not, -no more than you covet a condor's wings, or Nero's old palace, or Samson's strength, or any other impossibility. Then where is the grief, or any reason for it? Grievous it would be, very, if there were an impulse in you to run eight miles an hour, and you could not achieve four; or if, at sight of a gate, you always wished to leap over it and could not. But as you do not wish any of these boyish things, inability to do them is nothing to lament. The sorrow, if there is any, is in your having grown not to care about what were the pleasures of your childhood, and some of your youthful objects. Now there are those to whom boyish sports are a delight at fifty years of age, men who are happy for hours together in blowing soap-bubbles, and chasing butterflies. But then who are they? MARHAM. Poor idiots, certainly. But there are things of quite another class from what you have mentioned, which you and I have become uninterested in. AUBIN. Have grown indifferent to. And grown into this indifference we have, and not decayed into it. Many childish delights, and many youthful joys, a man has no pleasure in; for he has grown thoughtful, and so in thoughtless things he is no longer pleased. And is this, then, melancholy? No, uncle, no! I am free of the hall where the Muses live. They talk to me divinely about the arts and sciences, about what the ages were that are past, and about what the ages to come will be like. One Muse thrills me with her voice, in singing, and then one of her sisters entrances me with music, and from time to time they give me nectar to drink. Mortal as I am, I drink the drink of immortals. This is what I do, and often. So that it is no decay of nature, when I am out in the fields, if I am not eager after wild fruits, like a boy. Childish games have no interest for us now; but it is because of our interest in life, the great game the passions. Many things I do not feel about of |