true to a man which he troweth? And not rather, as the solution of a great mystery, that truth there is, and attainable it is, but that its rays stream in upon us through the medium of our moral as well as our intellectual being; and that, in consequence, that perception of its first principles which is natural to us is enfeebled, obstructed, perverted, by allurements of sense and the supremacy of self, and, on the other hand, quickened by aspirations after the supernatural; so that, at length, two characters of mind are brought out into shape, and two standards and systems of thought-each logical, when analyzed,

yet contradictory of each other, and only

not antagonistic because they have no common ground on which they can conflict?1

But, though no common ground, there may be a definite issue; and unless I have read my authors to little purpose, it emerges from all they have written and touching the nature course of things, their origin, and the term to which they are moving forward. New man believes in a present Deity, Renan in a future; to the English saint God is the Eternal Self-Consciousness, who was before all worlds, and guides them according to the word of His wisdom, by a plan fore-ordained, every part of which He holds in perspective and contemplates ere it is realized. That which comes out of the seed is only the full development of what was stored up within it; and so in the ripe age of Christianity we have a clue to its founder's intention. For an intention He must have had, as well as foresight of the consequences inevitably following in a world like ours upon beginnings so disposed and ordered. He is hidden in Himself; clouds and darkness are round about Him; none ever felt more piercingly how thick are the curtains of His pavilion than did this mystic and philosopher; but a deliberate plan is something which can be understood even though its author be invisible; it has a language, a grammar, of its own which saves it from the charge of being mere. haphazard or a succession of strokes at random. And though we cannot decipher all its syllables, or

1 Essay on Assent, p. 312.

write them out fair and without broken lines, still, if as a whole our reading corresponds with the highest and deepest wants of human nature, if it satisfies conscience, and lays down our duty, and makes communion with the Unseen possible, and opens to us a boundless prospect, yet does not flatter our passions or our pride, Newman would argue that we have all the proof we can reasonably demand, of its being the very interpretation which we were meant to achieve.

With Renan all these things must be

read backward, as in some unhallowed juggling spell. There is no key to existence but the ancient Eastern one of universal delusion, if that can be termed delusion which has come about by accident; for design, consciousness, foresight, are words without sense when we would talk of the eternal process. God is in the making. Our infinite Cosmos puts forth innumerable feelers into the vold; and, by experiments repeated through millenniums, it has come at last to be the unfinished yet promising enterprise which we behold. Some day, if luck attends it, the world will develop a triumphant ethical law; instead of brute matter blindly striving, and often annihilating what is most precious, it will have eyes and conscience; it will be just as well as almighty. But now "the real is a vast outrage on the ideal," and the noblest of all religions was itself due to prophecies misinterpreted, legends framed by dreaming enthusiasts, miracles expanded from simple occurrences through a mist of emotion, and hallucinations possessing the one human spirit which, without sacrilege or more than a pious metaphor, was worthy to be called Divine. All the gods are mortal, indeed; and the fairest of them will pass away; "tout ici-bas n'est que rêve . et symbole."

seen

As they began, so did these two men finish their thought-one with his "L'Eau de Jouvence," and science turned to pagan mythology, the other with his "Dream of Gerontius," the vision of judgment. Prospero has no one to judge him; he is lawless and free,

subject only to the formulas of the chemist, which he can elude if they press upon him too heavily. Gerontius belongs to a different race; he is of the sky and not mere sensuous flesh; he is Ariel in his lightness and purity, free, not from law, but from earthly passion —a winged nature, soaring upward like the fire to its eternal sphere. With Renan we feel ourselves falling into a darkness which thickens as we descend. With Newman our spirit springs aloft, we breathe an air tense and invigorating; we cannot think but that this should be the clime and atmosphere of highest human progress. Why go back to Athens or the Renaissance, famous above all else for their worship of a beauty which had in it too little of the moral element? If our instincts can be ranged upon any scale of objective worth-and we all believe that there is such a scale-then the instinct which has stirred Gerontius, "the old man eloquent," to dream of a Divine Presence and of judgment to come, is infinitely higher than that which sees the conclusion of our days as an euthanasia, a tranquil suicide, and nothing beyond. Comparison itself is, in such disputes, the keenest criticism; and who, when his mind is clear and self-possessed, would not rather be this Ariel than that Prospero?

Thinking over these things, I have sometimes likened Cardinal Newman, in his "gracious senescence"-if I may borrow an exquisite word from Mr. Lowell, to that Cephalus who is introduced at the beginning of Plato's "Republic," and who, "looking very much advanced in years, is seated on a cushioned chair, with a garland on his head, for he has been offering sacrifice in the court" to the immortals. Nor can I suggest the conclusion which, from his many teachings is to be gathered more appositely than by quoting that other "Dream of Gerontius" which I find attributed to Cephalus in the dialogue. It is Greek prose, lightsome and simple as Newman's own; and the moral which it holds out to us is not yet laid to heart; but far more likely to be a true one I consider it than all Ernest Renan's

"conjectural science" and serious frivolity. Cephalus, then, speaks to the logician, Socrates, in this wise:1

Let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below, and of the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here, were once a laughing matter to him; but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true; either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon what wrong he has done to others. And him, and he begins to reflect and consider

when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great, he will many a time, like a child, start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is the kind nurse of his age. "Hope," he says, "cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age, and the companion of his journey -hope, which is the mightiest to sway the restless soul of man."

But hope in the life to come is the Christian religion.

WILLIAM BARRY.

1 Republic, Bk. I., Jowett's translation.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF NEERA. THE AMULET.1 Translated for THE LIVING AGE by Mrs. Maurice Perkins.

PART III.

It was now the month of August; the heat grew more and more intense, although the days were somewhat shorter, and the discomfort which the heavy temperature produced, seemed to explain the languor which often oppressed me, even in the midst of the reviving joy of life.

Days and weeks passed in a leaden torpor; my strength faded away. The morning of the 26th of August I woke after a night troubled and full of dreams. I rose immediately, and as

1 Copyrighted by The Living Age Company.

Alexis still slept tranquilly I went down into the garden to walk. But soon the garden seemed to be a furnace. I went out into the country, I followed the paths, I sauntered by the brooks, I entered the wood and breathed in the morning air with delight, holding up my face to the boughs so that they might sprinkle my burning cheeks with a rain of dew. My hair, caught by the frolicsome branches of the forest trees, fell down strewn with leaves and blossoms. In the wet grass my light slippers lost all consistency, and I felt the soft earth under my feet. I stepped along in the light of the rising sun, through the moist meadows set with the white cups of the morning glory, where the blue eyes of the periwinkle greeted me with sisterly glances. All the wood-sounds were songs, all the twitterings of the nestlings were prayers, and falling on my knees, I too prayed in the midst of this joyous nature as if I were in a temple of God.

Towards evening the heaviness of the air increased; the sky was covered with clouds. I was unnerved to the point of exhaustion. When my cousin arrived he found me sitting under the rose trees by the side of the house without strength even to go as far as the paths. Perhaps he had come a little earlier than usual. Unconsciously he lengthened the time he passed with me, more and more.

We felt an increasing desire for nearness, for communion; we experienced more and more the need to confide everything to each other, even the most pass ing thoughts. The simplest speech between us was invested with a mysterious fascination whose influence we both felt, felt too, so that we could often understand each other by a word, or a slight movement of the head, and sometimes we said the same thing at

once.

he went on gently, laying my hand back on my knee.

I was obliged to answer, as I had so often done before, "Nothing," though I had the strongest desire to be able to tell him all sorts of fine and interesting things. We fell into silence; a strange silence which seemed to grow deeper in proportion as we wished to speak, but which was sweeter than I can say.

In this very place, beside these same rose trees, there slowly rose before me my own little figure as I once sat, long ago between papa and mamma, full of pride because of a summer dress covered with bunches of cherries, which I wore for the first time.

"Pick them, pick them," old Pietro would say, as he came and went.

I remembered the day when I fell into the reservoir, trying to catch a butterfly resting on the surface of the water! And I remembered standing by the gate with my apron full of nuts, and giving them all to a poor beggar who was hungry, and who put them in his pocket with a look of despair. The garden had seen my whole life, year after year, day after day; it had seen me laugh, it had seen me weep, it saw me now absorbed in my thoughts, poor thoughts no doubt, feminine thoughts! I turned my head at this moment to see what my cousin was doing. He had in his hands a white lace scarf which I had taken off my neck when the heat was greatest, and was crushing it together in an agitated manner which alarmed me. Fearing that my silence had annoyed him I immediately spoke to him, but he only answered by an unintelligible monosyllable. Then a fresh breeze blew on us, and I asked him for my scarf. He gave it up unwillingly, without speaking, with a wild glance that I had never seen before.

"The weather is changing," I said at last, troubled by this long continued

LIVING AGE.

My cousin raised his eyes to the sky carelessly, and answered:"Perhaps it is."

I sought in vain for something to say, but I could find nothing.

In the mean time little evening sounds