altogether very well. It is impossible now to say, this delicate filial love better than ten thousand words. how it may end. The invalid has gone to bed. On True hearts, howsoever bound together, by whatsoever first reaching the house, she felt very faint again. forms of affection, know each other. It is the It's a great nuisance. I hope it will end well. glorious excellence of the highest earthly love, (and Montague has been with her ever since; he watches this between the rector and his son is of such kind,) over her like a child. The rector, unfortunately, is that it has a symbol speech of its own, which the two not at home yet. How astonishingly an accident of initiated in the holy mystery alone understand. The this sort upsets people! Montague has just been child cannot speak; no, nor even press with the hand into my room for a moment, and has told me that of affection, but it speaks love and gratitude in the his sister has fallen asleep. I suppose I must have smile of its eyes. Blessed are they who can love as been frightened, for he looked quite startled when he the child loves; for there there is no suspicion. Oh! came in, and said, " Why, my dear fellow, you are for one friendship, so eternally and unchangeably almost as pale as Mary! Did you run your head foundationed, that appearances, and seeming contraagainst anything too?" dictions, and things for a season unexplainable, have no power to raise a moment-living suspicion! Oh! for a love, which shall buoy us up in the tempeststirred ocean of life-the haven of the weary spirits— the refuge in distress-the bright sunshine of the soul ! Can this be human love? Is there in the four quarters of this noisy, quarrelsome earth such a paradise as this? Perhaps not in its fulness; yet a type of it there may be, for there has been. It is as the visit of a phoenix. Happy, thrice happy, yes, and perchance too happy, he who finds it! It is a foretaste of something higher. It is too near heaven for most of us. It is to recline our life long, very children, in the bosom of a tender-hearted, earnest, anxious mother. No," I said, "but you know I have been terribly bullied." "Oh! Freeman, what a wretched, miserable pun! But seriously, you need not be alarmed," he said, in a very kind tone of voice, "there is not much the matter, and you could not help the accident happening, you know." Very true, most worthy friend and counsellor; nevertheless, I cannot help feeling somewhat anxious. The rector is now coming in with Hutchins-they have met at the door. Mr. Montague's face is a little flushed. It's all right; there is nothing to be alarmed about; and it is pronounced that she will be well again to morrow. Half-past twelve. N.B. It was very dull this evening, somehow. In a small family the absence of one makes a great difference. July 12th.-Miss Montague is, as was predicted, quite well again. What a glorious fellow her brother is! He could not be kept for long from his sister's room yesterday, and positively did not go to bed all night, although one of the servants sat up with his sister. I know this, for I heard him moving about in his own room, which is next to mine. We are all rather queer from yesterday's business; and I'm a little exhausted from want of rest. It's quite absurd to think of going to sleep, when you know that your next-door neighbour is awake and up; so I made a virtue of necessity, and read Fouqué's "Magic Ring." We were quietly watching the last rays of a very beautiful setting sun from the breakfast-room window, and the rector was pacing along the walk in front of the house, when a ring at the gate startled us, as it was late for visitors. Montague looked quite imperturbable about it, and was the only one among us who did not appear to be anxious. Our curiosity was increased tenfold, when up the path, preceded by the maid servant, there walked a man with a thin parcel under his arm. The rector came in to investigate, for it was directed to him. When he opened it, there, lo and behold! was the very picture of Gainsborough which he had spoken about at Mr. Hutchins's. This astonished him not a little, till turning it round away from its brown paper envelope, he saw a small slip of paper, whereon was written, "To the Rector of with his son Charles's love." The old man looked up at his son for an instant or so very fixedly, and then suddenly left the room. He passed me at the door, and his eyes were evidently filled with tears. We all united in admiration of the picture, which was indeed beautiful. When the rector came back, which he did very soon, he went up to his son, and taking his hand, pressed it warmly in his own, and kept it there for a while. He uttered nothing, for his heart was full; but his manner and look expressed his deep sense of July 13th.-To-day Colonel Hawkner was buried. When his earthly remains were carried from the house to the bier, Miss Hawkner was so overpowered by the circumstance, and showed so many incipient indications of double-pressure hysterics, that at her own particular request a strong glass of port-wine negus was instantly procured for her by her attendant maid. She could hardly swallow it for her sobs and tears; but under its genial influence she speedily became composed, and bore the loss with an affectingly tranquil resignation. This secret of the port-wine negus was divulged by the talkative maid, in the presence of Montague, his father, and the rest of the mourners, to her friend the housekeeper, who happened to be in the breakfast-room at the time, arranging and superintending the refreshment part of the business. On the return from the funeral the will was read by the solicitor, a Mr. Goodchild, from Dorchester. Montague and his father were present, as they were both of them executors, and therefore had been requested to attend. Montague told me that it was the greatest fun in the world (rather shocking!) But he certainly must have been tickled, for he has done nothing but laugh ever since he has been in. He said that while they were waiting for the reading of the will, it was quite instructing to hear Miss Hawkner's discreet mixture of pious reflections on the vanity of human life, and sundry bursts of sisterly affection, with which in a drawling, sentimental tone of voice, and with up-turned eyes, she benefited the rector. She, in fact, did her best to improve the occasion for the benefit of all present, whom, as the carnalminded Montague profanely avowed, she regarded with an altogether self-satisfactory religious pity. She then mentioned Colonel Hawkner's many marks of piety, and dwelt with great force on the consoling fact, that he had been with her only a month ago to hear her own dear minister at church. She said he had always had a serious turn from a boy, and was, she trusted, a saved character. How all things did change when the will was read, and it appeared that little Hutchins was to have the property! All these little memories of a pious past disappeared, and she became quite furious, indulging | No matter what a man is so long as he is clever. in countless inuendos against her brother. She said that what he had now done was unjust shameful ungrateful. She trusted she might have strength to forgive him said that she had never been treated as a sister ought that for years she had been his slave, and said nothing about it that nobody knew what she had to put up with that she knew it was for her good, but it was hard to bear; but she was quite sure that Mrs. Hutchins, though she was in legal bondage and unconverted, would never be such an unfeeling, heartless mother as to part with her only child-that, she was sure however, everybody seemed against her! It was very cruel! saying which, she burst into most opportune tears, and left the room. She has, it appears, an excellent competence of her own, and as she is very careful of it, it is more than sufficient to maintain her in her former position. But Montague, says that her gradual change of face, as the truth came out, was irresistible. The rector, who was present at the end of our conversation, said that his son was very harsh; that Miss Hawkner was a person whose mode of thought was very different from ours, and that therefore there was much to be said for her; though, of course, he could not defend all she had said about the dead; "For they at least," I must quote his own words, "are not to be judged by man's judgment, least of all to be accused by sur viving relatives. The awful silence of their graves, and the void they have left among us, should surely teach us this, if nothing else." And so, very often, the unblushing excuse for the admission into families of a tainted literature of unmistakeably evil tendency is, that it is wonderfully talented; and poor unhappy Virtue is obliged to rest contented with some such pitiful, half-apologetic apostrophe as this. What a man he might have been if he'd only been good!' The result of all this is inevitable. Not only do men take to mere mental knowledge, and the more purely mental the better; but they even trust, in their moral and religious guidance, rather to genius than virtue; as though religion were a syllogism, and the science of virtue as purely intellectual as a problem of mathematics.' Then I suppose you will quite sympathize with what a learned philosopher of our Church has written, The reason why, notwithstanding all our acute reasons and sharp disputings, Truth does not get on more in the world is, that we so often separate goodness and truth, which can never be really disunited; they grow both from the same root, and live in each other.' I think these are his words." "Yes, I do agree with him, indeed. And it goes much farther than we imagine at first sight; for if we only remember that beauty is the garment of truth, that, so to speak, truth and beauty are related to each other, as heat to light, we can plainly se how science and art will depend in their subjective condition upon the empire of virtue. For the highest of all truth is moral truth. We may have light, indeed, without heat; but it is borrowed light, receiving all its glory from that, to which it is, as it were, the unconscious mirror.” Do you mean to imply, then, that a man must be good in order to be really scientific, or to be a good July 14th-Montague proposed this morning another walk with me, as it was a fine day, and he wanted to continue the conversation we had had together when he took me to see his former school. This time he proposed we should walk to the sea-artist ?", coast, where there were some exquisite peeps of scenery. So we started, passing Mr. Hutchins's house, and continuing along that same lane, which became more and more shaded with overarching trees, as we trudged on till we neared the coast. 22 "Well, Freeman," said Montague, "you hinted at a subject in our last gossip together which I want to hear more about; as, if I understand what you mean rightly, it quite hits with my views. Feelings and thoughts are all the same to me, you know. I do not care sixpence about them, because I can do without 'em. Labour and work, something done, that is what takes me; as for the rest, tears, and sighs, and ecstasies, it is all entire, unmitigated rubbish.” 40. "What I meant does certainly," I replied, "bear upon this opinion of yours "Not an opinion." "Well, this judgment of yours, if you please, but only incidentally. Neither do I at all agree with your naked proposition, as it stands, though I say amen to its spirit. The great doctrine which we need to be taught now-a-days is, that there are truths which can only be morally apprehended; that all the intellect in the world will not avail us in dealing with these subjects, which moreover happen to be the very highest and most necessary.' "I see what you mean; that moral subjects, and religious ones more particularly, are not to be understood by the head so much as by the heart; for there is an understanding of the heart, and that infinitely higher than mere mental understanding. It is that of which 'Reason' in the Kantian system is a caricature; in our case, it is, when habituated,Faith." "Quite so. Men, now-a-days, worship intellect. In a way, I do; of art, however, more than of science, and for this reason: the discovery of intellectual truth depends on the human understanding, and therefore vice will affect the progress only so far as it enervates the intellectual faculties, and gives an unhealthy bias. But a creation of art depends entirely upon the individuality of the artist. It is a reflex of himself. As that same writer, Dr. Smith, whom you quoted, has said of an infinitely higher subject, that such as men themselves are, such will God himself seem to be;' so we may say, that such as artists themselves are, such will the beauty that lurks in the visible seem to be; and such, therefore, will their artistic creation be. Fra Angelico never essayed his brush without the precious purification of previous prayer. He prayed for heavenly aid, and yielded himself to the guidance of guardian spirits, like a docile and unquestioning child. Is it not horrible even to imagine that the coarse and voluptuous figures of a Titian, or the graceful but earthly conceptions of a Correggio, could have ever befouled his canvass? For in his case all was supersensual, and breathed of heaven. The spiritual beauty which has been enshrined in the visible order of things, to pacify yet animate man's longings after the primal beauty, which eye hath not seen, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, was seized on by his purified heart and mirrored in it. To the lascivious he is severe; to the earthly and self-indulgent, deficient, perchance, in grace; to the meek and humble, he is a blessed revealer of things secret and hidden, through whom glimpses of glories unspeakable are granted to them. What a strange contrast to this saintly painter does his contemporary, Fra Filippo, present! Breaker of solemnest vows registered in heaven, -a recreant, evil and impure, this man, though he studied ceaselessly day and night, and introduced great improvements in the mere execution of his art; yet in the representation of sacred incidents, was sometimes fantastic, sometimes vulgar. One picture of his, now in the Louvre, to take an example, described to be of great beauty, and marked by all his characteristics, represents the Virgin with a head commonplace or worse; while the countenance of the Infant is heavy, and the Angels, with crisped hair, have the faces of street urchins.' There are excellencies in it, where his evil heart would not so much interfere; but where love seeks for faint symbols of the presence of beauty, in its most awful manifestations, there he miserably fails; for his eyes are blinded that he cannot see. And even in the contemplation of external nature, whether animate or inanimate, the sensuality of vice and evil passions depraves the taste, and the beauteous is not to such an one what it is in itself, the cloud-vesture of God's love and goodness, but a very will-o'-the-wisp, floating over the impure and foetid marsh of his own turbid passions." No! all I maintain is, that leisure, and the otiose inactivity of wealth, do not give a prescriptive right to the beautiful; for this were the worst philosophy of all; since at all events the votaries of intellect do place the power of apprehending beauty in themselves; whereas the slaves of luxury and pride confine it to the chance of outward circumstances. Nature utters her sweet speech to the simple and honest, the open and hearty, the industrious and active. For Nature is, to repeat the saine doctrine which I have already laid down for your benefit, what we like to make of her. We may mould her to our wishes; and some may prefer the trim gardens of Versailles to the mighty pine-forests of Norway. But she is so sensitive of human touch that her spirit passes when men begin to analyze and investigate her. So long as we venerate and love, and offer her our hearts, she admits us to the very shrine of the inner temple, and we can see multitudes of angels, and can hear the running of a pure river of water, and can know that we are on the first step of the majestic portal to the all-embracing and all-containing invisible. From the "I see. You mean, in plain words, without any unreachable distance float down thrilling notes of a fine rhetoric, that a man who has been making up mystic music, and the whole creation passes before his books all his life long in a counting-house cannot us in the garment of adoring devotion. All things enjoy a fine landscape, but prefers Margate or Rams-sensible are hand-posts, plainly pointing towards their gate instead." meaning and life, the ministering spirits of heaven, who carry on the machinery, so to speak, of earth; and our ears hear the continuous harmonies which well forth from the deep silence of the presence, and the eyes of our souls are opened to see the golden links which bind this vast fabric of matter, and join it on to God's throne, whence it has its ascertained forms, which proceed in infinitely diverging rays from the Divine beauty, itself inexpressible and uncontained. And as they originally proceed from, so may they be traced back to, their One Source. And this is the Religion of Nature." "No, I do not mean that at all. Your plain words have unfortunately missed the meaning of my rhetoric. You know well enough, Montague, that if a man has an honest and good heart, he may be a tradesman or merchant, and, yet more, his duty may require him to attend to accounts constantly; yet he may rejoice like a young child in the sweet breath of green fields, and the beauties of the dear good earth, when he can get to them. It does not require that a man should be born and bred in a large park, and be surrounded with costly exotics, and pass his weary life in killing game, and securing the ill-will of a grumbling tenantry, in order to see the lovely things of God's creation nay, from such, as the infinitely despicable, they are hidden. The veriest child at the rich man's lodge, if only it does its appointed work, looks up to its God, and loves on from morning till night, sees more glorious visions than ever have been or can be seen by its very excellent master, spite of all his easy circumstances. Servants, you know, can do all manner of serviceable things for their masters; but those matters cannot seduce Nature to a like obedience. She quietly smiles: for she has seen a thousand such lords, whose bodies have long ago crumbled to dust in her boosm, and she esteems them at their worth; for she knows well enough that they have misinterpreted her message according to their own unworthy bent. She does not ask how much they have, but what they are. She does not count up the number of their acres, but rather the number of their good deeds." "A notable diatribe, verily, O most redoubtable champion of milkmaids and ploughboys against the rich and the noble! This is, I confess, a novelty. Nature a radical! Oh! Freeman, Freeman!" "A true radical, in sooth; I know no one who so effectually preaches the doctrine of equality. But it is almost hopeless to get you to talk seriously, my dear fellow. Yet you provoked this conversation. But you know as well as I do that I have not been abusing the rich or noble, as a body, since this would be a manifest injustice. Indeed, it were impossible for an Englishman to do so, since he must know that the higher classes have contributed as much as, if not more than the rest, to the number of the great and good. "Well, this is all very pretty, and perhaps I might agree--I don't say I do, mind, but perhaps I might as regards art: but what has a good heart to do with science?" "Why, science has truth for its object, like as art has beauty; and though I have already granted that science is less affected by our moral condition, yet it is also influenced. For the highest truth is moral and religious; the solution of the problem of our own being, and the discovery of the final cause of the universe, and the proof and extent of a moral governance. But vice and sensuality blunt the edge of our understanding, and truth shrinks dismayed from such polluted touch. Truth dwells in God alone, as much as beauty, and as it is the pure in heart alone who shall see Him, so' therefore is it they only who can see truth. When Zoroaster's disciples asked him what they should do to get winged souls, such as might soar aloft in the bright beams of divine truth, he bids them bathe themselves in the waters of life; they asking what they were, he tells them, the four Cardinal Virtues, which are the four rivers of Paradise. Of course, if you only consider the physical sciences, which are the lowest of all, moral preparation will have little to do with the matter, but since these only contemplate phenomena, and do not reach reality, I do not see what they have particularly to do with truth." "Oh, visionary, Germanistic, fanciful, unpractical Harry Freeman! I take it, it will be all up with chemists, and lecturers on electricity, and British Institutions, and Adelaide Galleries, when you are made philosopher-in-chief to her most gracious |