duty, whether physical, mental, moral, or spiritual, ought to be shunned or slighted by us. In the minutest and seemingly most insignificant concerns of life can we serve God. The fulfilling a condition of our existence is equally a matter of duty as the unprompted and unwitnessed act of love.

Whatever we have to do, we ought to do well, to the best of our knowledge and ability. The business of life, then, is in hand entrusted to our care by our Divine Master, who will require of us not only not to have abused his charge, but to have used it to the best advantage. Let us rather try to live well, for that we have it in our power to do, than to live long, for that is in God's hand alone, and cannot even be divined by us. What the heart of the young man said to the Psalmist was dictated by a noble feeling, and a most spiritual pulse :

"Tell me not in mournful numbers

Life is but an empty dream;
For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

"Life is real! life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal:

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul."

Every nation has its great men, the memory of whose lives is cherished by every patriotic soul to which that nation gives birth. What inflamed the Greek and Roman youth to act so manfully and so powerfully-what but the renown of their ancestors? Did not that wonderful people, the Jews, hand down with a scrupulous care the sayings of their prophets, and the deeds of their mighty men of valour? Do not the hardy Swiss, in the heart of their Alpine mountains, adore the name of their political redeemer, Tell? And what Scotsman does not feel the blood thrill with a power that nerves his soul to stand by his country, at the name of our national redeemer, Wallace? Oh, let it never be said of us what has been said of the once glorious land of Greece, whose "all except their sun is set!" -let it never be said of us that, though the memories of our great men "sound like a distant water's fall," and thunder in our ears to rise and quit us like men, yet we the living are dumb through very cravenness of soul.

And shall we, having the universe to range for materials of thought, scorning to borrow at second hand from our fellow-men, and claiming individual responsibility and consequent necessity of independent self-formation of thought, imitate these glorious men to make our lives sublime? Glorious as these men are, there is One more glorious still, before whose radiant majesty these stars of lesser light "pale their ineffectual fires." The Man, Christ Jesus-the Anointed of God-the Saviour of mankind-stands grandly forward in His living actions as the model after which we may make our lives sublime. The redeemer of his country's liberties, the redeemer of his country's honour, the redeemer of his country's faith, must

dwindle into comparative insignificance before the Redeemer of the human race. His was a manly as well as a godly character-manly in the true sense of the term. If Wallace's name has such a magic power upon our love of country, what power should not Christ's name have upon our love of mankind !

Seeing we have such an historical character to point to, we shall not betray the dignity of our theme by referring to any lower standard of excellence. Rousseau, perhaps the wildest infidel that ever breathed, revered the historical character of Christ. Plato, in defining a thoroughly good man, described His character so closely that it looks like a prophecy.

In the action of life, then, Christ's is a model for us all, after which we may form the character and style of our own active being. Behold in him the most perfect type of humanity-in whose wonderful life there is a deep and serious revelation of action for us. Behold in Him the man God meant us all to be-the simple man— the good man—the truly great man.

Goodness is greatness in the eye of God.

Eternal-this, that waneth not with time.

On every spot by human footstep trod,

Range we from pole to pole through every clime,
God hath poured out his goodness, and we may
Embrace its light, and be as fair as day.

Holy the light of goodness is, and pure;
Enduring for its sun can never set.
Dark clouds of mist may steam up and obscure
Day's loveliness; but they have never yet
Enshrouded it in utter darkness quite:

Radiant it shines, its prison-tent roof torn,
With the same stainless constant beams of light
It sprang from on the grand creating morn.
Conform we, then, to goodness, and its ray,
Kindled by God, will light our darkest way.

THE FROZEN ALPS.

How many a torrent's slumbering might
Lies bound on yonder towering mountain,
Which fate forbids to leave its height,

Lone cradled in its frozen fountain

A voiceless fountainhead that may not flow,
Wrapp'd in the quiet of eternal snow.
So, on the wintry hills of life,

Brood souls whose genius all should cherish,
That frozen by the chills of Strife,

And Want, and Care, uncared for, perish;

Fain to rush down o'er Glory's laurell'd plains:

The world with icy storms their noble impulse chains.

THE LOVE OF SOLITUDE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE

POET'S MIND.

THERE exists in many minds a disposition to solitary musing-to a retirement within themselves-that is often wrongly estimated. Retirement from the world is not solitude. Very often the spirit that leads us to retire is a yearning desire for some ideal perfection that society cannot bestow. The desire for the eternal and infinite, often undefined, yet ever true and real in the poetic mind, leads to the contemplation of the eternal within us, since outward society is but false and hollow. There is in the true soul a strange deep-seated unrest, that ever keeps driving it away from the present, and it is a material difference whether into the past or the future. Very frequently this feeling operates differently at different times on the same soul. And when the deep waters of the soul are stirred by the feeling of unrest within, then the feelings assume their highest, earnest tone, and their expression is the essence of the lyric-the poetry of solitary feeling in its purest form. We are driven forth from that which was formerly the centre of our being, and forward towards the infinite, which we see not in or through society, but through our own inner being, which is to us ever mysterious and infinite. Besides, we have an internal consciousness of the eternity of our being. All poets' souls have a deep feeling of religion, which is ever and anon brought out, like from the chords of an Æolian harp, by the passing breath of heaven. There is no poet an advocate of the soul's materiality or mortality; for he feels that within him which would deny it though he asserted it to the world. The poet is not a voluntary liar or truthteller; he is an involuntary seer and sayer. Even Shelley was

another Balaam.

When we are driven toward the infinite, we immediately revert to our own inner being. The soul flies forth, and finding no rest for the sole of her feet, returns again into the ark. The raven souls stay among the dead forms that float on the surface of the world's society. The first step towards the infinite is usually made to the society we have hitherto formed part of. We have not yet learned that the finite can never form a base for the infinite, that the sun must rest in infinity, while a rush-light may be stuck in a bottle-neck. Then we return into our own souls, and commence our solitude. It is not necessary that we should be alone to feel this solitude. We look out from our inner being on society and the world, and care not what they think, since we know that our internal existence is concealed from all, unknown to all. We feel our life-our real, true, characteristic existence-to be of our soul. This becomes more intensely and emphatically the centre of our existence, the pole of our being. We become vividly conscious of a perfect intellectual and soul-like idiosyncrasy. We are altered in position; our centre of gravity is consequently altered from the mere animal to the soul existence. During the change there is often a complete overturn. When the organs of the musical voice are shifted in position, downwards in

the throat, the voice is broken and destroyed. When the change is completed the voice is fuller and deeper. So does the soul send forth a deeper tone that comes from the new centre, deeper down amid the very vitals of our being. We learn to become more earnest the "register" of our soul's voice is more earnest and full-it acquires its character of a deep bass-a solemnity and volume as of eternity. Our souls go forth into eternity, either to the Past, which has become portion of eternity gone, or the Future, which is an eternity untravelled, and all are one even parts of the Universal and Infinite Now. When we turn to the eternity that is behind us, we must look at it through the ages of the world's history; and then our spirits take a melancholy tone, and become a wail for the dead and the vanished. We must pass through many a lonely shade as we wade up the stream of Time. And when we tread o'er the ruins of ages, can we feel joyful? The dead are beneath our feet; we are treading on the graves of all our race, save Enoch and Elijah. And there are wild and strange gusts of feeling that moan among these graves-this God's-rest and graveyard of the world. Who shall tell whence they come? Is it not from the vast ocean beyond-from the great eternity that lies on the further side, and whose boundaries we but half descry through the tomb-darkness? The wind that crosses a hot desert is hot; and how should these soul-gusts be other than wild and mournful, when they come from an unknown eternity through a strange and lonely waste of tombs. Here we are lonely, alone. Pleasure parties go not to the graveyard. Those who go there go alone. Many a solitary hath a dwelling in the tombs, and the world, thinking of the demoniac of old, saith of the lonely one, "He, too, has a devil"-" he hath drunk the wine of devils." And oft, as of old, does it try to "bind him with its fetters and chains;" but it is only by the God in man-the feeling of the Absolute-which is a perpetual incarnation of Divinity in humanity—that the unrest of the lonely one is calmed-not by the world. Hence we are solitary in the Past, and when we go into the Future, like Columbus over the unfurrowed Atlantic, we have difficulty in getting assistants-we get no companion. And yet all men are being carried into the Future by the current of time. But they are carried in a blind mass, like the sands of the Tagus, while the grains of gold are few and far between. And we deem that there are many grains of gold that pass undiscovered. But they shall yet form gems in the star-jewelled diadem of eternity. Nevertheless, the Future, say we, is the inheritance of noble minds-and they love everything that is a symbol of pretensions-as the stars in the blue heavens, that are the twinklings of a brighter glory beyond them. This habit of viewing things from eternity is a true and proper habit. It discloses their true poetry and their proper worth. It is the mark of a grovelling spirit to view all things in their relation to self-to make self the centre of the universe. Things acquire their sublimity not so much from themselves, as from their relations. There is nothing but the Eternal that is essentially sublime. Hence even a mean soul has something sublime and mournful; it is the meanness that disgusts

not the soul. Perhaps this constitutes the sublimity of tragic poetry -the human energy and earnestness of its tone-the unfolding of its eternity and its humanity.

Our souls rush forward into the Future because it is part of eternity. Even the present is part of eternity, but its eternity is hidden under the clouds of human infirmity; and the now is so limited-it is past away even while we think of it-that we fail to grasp it, and much less its eternity. The present is made up of moments, the Past and the Future-we feel, but cannot express them. Moreover, what "Now" can we have? Does it not belong to the future or the past? or is it not rather the place, the point where the future is joined with the past? The now is that which hath position, but not magnitude. We might go further, and say, thatthe now is not there is no now; it is either the end of the past or the beginning of the future. If it hath existence, it hath no eternity, and therefore we linger not in it, but turn to the eternity that is before us, or that which lies behind us. We stand between them in our present being. Our next minute or particle of time is the future'sour last is the past's. The past is ever draining away the future, and the future is neither diminished, nor the past increased. They continue the same in themselves and to each other. They are even the same-the one Eternal Now. The poet only recognises this, and his mission is to preach of eternity. And in all that he doth, and is, he is one great sermon: "Behold the Now is not; it is false: turn from it; and the Past and the Future are one eternity, whose centre and circumference is God." Nay, it hath no circumference, limit, or bourne. "IT IS." Here we have reached the dead-wall of our being. Let us cease; we cannot get further than, "IT IS." Thus is the longing for eternity the origin of the disposition to solitude, which is one state of the poet's ordeal of transformation. There are multitudinous varieties. Wordsworth is not more solitary amid the lakes of Cumberland than Byron was amid the madness of his Venetian life. question if so lonely. The retreat to the inner soul's solitude is the poet's Cave of Adullam, which to him is not so lonely. It is not so dreary within as without, for he hears "voices in the night," and is uplifted by the energetic earnestness of his longings. His voice, when it bursts forth from his burning heart, is the chaunt of immortality.

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