458 CHAPTER V. THE BURDEN, AND THE MYSTERY, AND THE HOPE. "Blessed is the man who going through the vale of misery uses it for a well." --Psalms lxxxiv. 5, 6. "Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of Death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night." -Amos, v. 8. ONOCROTALOS.-Now that your little task is ending, that you are completing the circle of your humble Life, I pray you, fast bind it with some of the strong conclusions which have been elicited during our reading and wanderings. Indifferent these cannot be, if they may affect any fellow-being's experience; if they may cast a permanent intellectual ray into the darkness of our lot, or yield a spark of hope or comfort amidst "the strife Which stirs the liquid surface of man's Life." It ARCANGELO.-The spirit of all the teaching we have heard from Books, and our best companions in Life, and from Nature, the spirit of all the teaching is this :-Do thy work; in season and out of season-punctually, perseveringly. How delicious, how refreshing, how full of truth, that reply of the toiling maiden,-"Work? is not Work: it is only a mock name for Love!" Work thou in that spirit. This will reveal to thee the Purpose of thy Life, which it is for thee to serve. Hereby, will you learn deeply of Love, that central essence of Light and Life, deeply of Love and Wisdom, of Wisdom, that knowledge and application of Light and Life, of Love and Wisdom, and their orderly use in all things. Pause not, doubt not; however intense the cold disfavour of men, persist in this thy soul's development until the hour of the great mortal transition-beyond that, you will rise from the point of ascent you have attained on earth. Let your course be distinguished by Cheerfulness, Humanity, Firmness. Lead the hopeful Life: forgetting never, that happiness consists in imparting happiness. Let your soul have a feeling, a sympathy for all Lifenor animal, nor flower, nor grass, nor flowing cloud, stand apart from your affections. With manliness of spirit, eschew Public Opinion. Trust thyself: thereby, alone, all things will serve; thereby, alone, thy real self ascertains its true dignitythereby, puts forth all its powers. Cultivate the Imagination. It will console and exalt in every place, under every circumstance. "Bounded and conditioned by co-operant Reason, Imagination becomes the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer." There, speaks a voice from the throne of Science. But, further, Imagination invests with form and colour all that is reached by soul or sense. By its aid, seek what is conveyed in that majestical, impalpable word-Beauty. Present that most celestial Vision of the soul everywhere-in thy very actions-even the Spartans, nourishing their Doric austerity, prayed the gods to grant them-the Beautiful with the Good. Neglect no moment in the pursuit of Beauty: a glance at any point of time or place will reveal to us the miraculous. "The first time, ay, the first time flings A glory even o'er trivial things." Let us justify the truth of this by educating ourselves to constantly perceive the uncommon in common things-cultivate, I say, the poetic faculty, the divining rod of Science. ONOCROTALOS.-Your cordial disposition is too uniform, urbane companion. Too literally, you would for "good in all things." In summing up Life, you are not taking its abjectness into your calculation. Alas, "We, the weak mariners of that wide lake, On its wide surface to an unknown goal." In this voyage of mystery, disappointment mects us on whatever tack we sail, and we never have so clear a look-out but that we are haunted by perplexity. We are, each of us, in the great torment and necessity, spoken of by Hermas in his last Similitude. As for aught comforting,-ah, me! the charities that ornament Society are frigid, limited, chiefly born of vanity; having a seeming beautifulness; but without warmth of true religious life-chilling, like the luminous branches of a frosted forest. Bethink you,-scanty as has been the investigation we are about concluding: when our journey is drawing towards its end; when we look back at the long line of past years; at the ground we have gone over,-the weak rehearsal of men, and circumstances and things: at this solemn moment, I say, reflexion will convince us that there are dreary thoughts, and sources of unrest to which you have not given due prominence? After describing the raptures one has derived from Books, and arousing ourselves once more as to what Life really presents near and far-oh, the fickleness of things and of ourselves!-one has to lay down the pen and cry:-"Has all this gladness been but a dream, a brief deceitful dream, which comes between waking and true sleep?" After reading a moving volume of a great life, or a great achievement, one has soon to sigh with Hazlitt:-" You would suppose the feelings would last for ever, or subdue the mind to their own harmony and tone," but our first contact with the world reveals our frailty, we are "the prey of petty and annoying circumstance."--After beautiful scenes, after experiencing the healing beneficence of Nature, how quickly the ways of the common world afflict us with dire despondency: the sun becomes darkened at noon-day, all trees are yews and cypresses, every flower is inscribed with woe: one concurs with Plato, who, as the Orientals tell us, being asked what he thought of this world, answered,—“ I entered into it by necessity: I dwelt in it with admiration and I leave it with contempt." Furthermore, there are painful mysteries in every new thought, in every new incident, which have been a trouble to all people of all times: there is a de profundis in every particular of Life. You say it is not so with the masses of people, who are always without culture. Then, so much the worse that so literally the sacred words have to be verified to-day-that "increase of knowledge increaseth sorrow." Our sense of insignificance becomes more palpable with advancing years, with every fresh discovery of science. We hear only, and hear always, an old story, presented in a new guise. To the Eye of Science, as to the Psalmist's God, a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, as a watch in the night. Job preached the sorrow which still inhabits the heart of man, Pliny mourned over it, Epicurus and Homer sang it. But not only the pure in heart, and the sincere thinker have their pains. Where breathes the man, who after treading the thorny path of duty amongst his fellows, after yielding them of his substance, his affection, his tears after long draughts of purest peace and pleasure, which you deem restorative, most blessed-where is the man to whom the hour is not appointed when he cries of those things,-"Oh, the futility of the sacrifice" and worse still," Oh, the futility of the joy?" To beggar and prince, the unlearned and the scholar, equally comes home the truth that To Be, is To Suffer. In action, each moment is a struggle: in reflexion, there is the saddening consciousness that the dearest objects in our possession will soon be lost to us: and in the loss of them, that they return to us no more. Then, there are those Trials of the Spirit, which other minds than those which suffer cannot estimate, whatever words you may use for their description. There are those periods of awe and terror when God has a controversy with the soul of man: or rather, as said of old, when we are possessed by "an Evil Spirit from the Lord." We have to go through the Great Temptation, we have to drink of the cup of trembling-alone. Oh, the recollection of those dread times leads me to others gloomier still. When we feel the coldest oppression that the human heart can endure; when we feel that in spite of the assuredness that years can provide delight, and in spite of a grateful recognition of God's lovingkindness-the world's true bliss is not reserved for us: it may be shared by other beings-but it were better for ourselves to die and be forgotten it were blessedness, indeed, if our pains could secure happiness for others: blessedness, in such case, to become the dust we have sprung from, and know no other life: when the cry of the Divine Agony is wrung from sinning lips :—“ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” TRINCULO. Oh, answer, answer, benignant friend! More blighting airs never came from Avernus. No fury could pursue man's energies with greater fierceness. These cruel truths, if truths they be, would take felicity from all that belongs to earth. ARCANGELO.-God, who permits the great darkness, will, also, give the great light.—I acknowledge in myself what Onocrotalos states. I cannot deny that man is inconsistent: all the Religions declare it-and I am a man. One moment we are as gods-another, and we long to rest beneath the green folds of the field: man now speaks as though crowned with unwithering garlands, and enjoying an immortal summer-a little touch from adverse circumstances and it is all winter with him not a ray of sunshine is to be seen in his countenance, not one little flower of hope blossoms in |