as easily as primitive people imagined the humours of the gods in fair weather: what is she to believe in, if not in this vision woven from within ?

It takes very little water to make a perfect pool for a tiny fish, where it will find its world and paradise all in one, and never have a presentiment of the dry bank. The fretted summer shade, and stillness, and the gentle breathing of some loved life near-it would be paradise to us all, if eager thought, the strong angel with the implacable brow, had not long since closed the gates.

It was no longer a hope; it was only that possibility which clings to every idea that has taken complete possession of the mind: the sort of possibility that makes a woman watch on a headland for the ship which held something dear, though all her neighbours. are certain that the ship was a wreck long years ago.

No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled.

All who remember their childhood remember the strange vague sense, when some new experience came,

that everything else was going to be changed, and that there would be no lapse into the old monotony.

Our relations with our fellow-men are most often determined by coincident currents; the inexcusable word or deed seldom comes until after affection or reverence has been already enfeebled by the strain of repeated excuses. X

There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She has lost her crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then for ever passed her by.

All minds, except such as are delivered from doubt by dulness of sensibility, must be subject to a recurring conflict where the many-twisted conditions of life have forbidden the fulfilment of a bond. For in strictness there is no replacing of relations: the presence of the new does not nullify the failure and breach of the old. Life has lost its perfection; it has been maimed; and until the wounds are quite scarred, conscience continually casts backward, doubting glances.

She who willingly lifts up the veil of her married life has profaned it from a sanctuary into a vulgar place.

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

If energetic belief, pursuing a grand and remote end, is often in danger of becoming a demon-worship, in which the votary lets his son and daughter pass through the fire with a readiness that hardly looks like sacrifice tender fellow-feeling for the nearest has its danger too, and is apt to be timid and sceptical towards the larger aims without which life cannot rise into religion.

It is one thing to love the fruits of treachery, and another thing to love traitors—

'Il tradiniento a molti piace assai,

Ma il traditore a gnun non piacque mai.'

The same society has had a gibbet for the murderer and a gibbet for the martyr, an execrating hiss for a dastardly act, and as loud a hiss for many a word of generous truthfulness or just insight: a mixed condition of things which is the sign, not of hopeless confusion, but of struggling order.

コー

It is the lot of every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of the crowd, that he must often speak in virtue of yesterday's faith, hoping it will come back

to-morrow.

The repentance which cuts off all moorings to evil, demands something more than selfish fear.

There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation.

It is in the nature of all human passion, the lowest as well as the highest, that there is a point at which it ceases to be properly egoistic, and is like a fire kindled within our being to which everything else in us is mere fuel.

Love does not aim simply at the conscious good of the beloved object: it is not satisfied without perfect loyalty of heart it aims at its own completeness.

Wherever affection can spring, it is like the green leaf and the blossom-pure, and breathing purity, whatever soil it may grow in.

Life never seems so clear and easy as when the heart is beating faster at the sight of some generous self-risking deed. We feel no doubt then what is the highest prize the soul can win; we almost believe in our own power to attain it.

As Romola walked, often in weariness, among the sick, the hungry, and the murmuring, she felt it good to be inspired by something more than her pity-by the belief in a heroism struggling for sublime ends, towards which the daily action of her pity could only

tend feebly, as the dews that freshen the weedy ground to-day tend to prepare an unseen harvest in the years

to come.

Many legends were afterwards told in that valley about the blessed Lady who came over the sea, but they were legends by which all who heard might know that in times gone by a woman had done beautiful loving deeds there, rescuing those who were ready to perish.

After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.

To the common run of mankind it has always seemed a proof of mental vigour to find moral questions easy, and judge conduct according to concise alternatives.

To have a mind well oiled with that sort of argument which prevents any claim from grasping it, seems eminently convenient sometimes; only the oil becomes objectionable when we find it anointing other minds on which we want to establish a hold.

·0

As a strong body struggles against fumes with the more violence when they begin to be stifling, a strong