OPENING GOLDEN DOORS.

The idea that human happiness is dependent on the cultivation of the mind and on the discovery of truth is, next to the conviction of our immortality, the idea most full of consolation to man, for the cultivation of the mind has no limit, and truth is the only thing that is eternal. BEACONSFIeld.

O me" writes Ralph Meeker, in a little spontaneous commentary on fiction," come inexpressible beauty and heavenly rest from the atmosphere of William Black's stories. No other writer, unless it be Jean Paul, has this effect on me. The inspiration of Black sends me to the skies. I mean his haunting twilight scenes, in Scotland especially. He whispers the soul into a Beethoven tranquillity of rest, a veritable sanctuary of joy in heaven. This thrilling uplift of the higher nature is a power that comes like sanctification from some writers. Black has the spiritual touch and he carries souls into the higher realm, -into that

heavenly peace of purity and holiness that is above

and beyond the things of time, above all things earthly and base. I am sure that his memory rests in the hearts of more good people than that of almost any other writer of fiction. In movement and dramatic power he has no particular strength but O, that flight from earth to the angels that comes with his holy scenes at sunset! or by sea and mountain, when love speaks and fills the world with music and light, when God's own presence sanctifies the soul! The moment one begins to argue, to analyze, it all vanishes. To hint, is to feel that it is comprehended. his inspiring scenes I have been lifted to the Mount of Transfiguration. Black did it. I can only say, God bless him and keep him! May the angels guard him and canopy him with glory. No writer ever did more good with his pen in fiction.

In

"He may have been rough in speech, brusque in manner, with nothing adorable in his worldly ways, but in his soul was the God-like spark, the flame, the illumination of Heaven. . . . One momentary view of life from celestial heights will enable one to walk aright for years from the

paths below, to the serene mountain-tops above the storms. Once or twice in a century some human pen has the power to exalt us. It is most like the power of Omnipotence. And with it one can dwell near to God."

To inspire such exquisite appreciation as that expressed by Mr. Meeker is, like poetry, "its own exceeding great reward." Only a poet's mind could so receive and transmit the beauty of the impressions made by the transcendent pictorial effects of William Black. What a glory of color is in this passage:

"By the time they reached the shore an extraordinarily beautiful sunset was shining over the sea and land. The Atlantic was a broad expanse of the palest and most brilliant green, with the pathway of the sun a flashing line of gold, coming right across until it met the rocks, and these were a jet-black against the glow. Then the distant islands of Colonsay, and Staffa, and Lunga, and Fladda lying on this shining green sea, appeared to be of a perfectly transparent brown; while nearer at hand the long ranges of cliffs were becoming a pale rose-red under the darkening blue-gray sky. It was a blaze of color."

Who but Black could actually paint the air and the changing clouds? And again,

"Before them lay the Atlantic a pale line of blue, still, silent, and remote. Overhead, the sky was a clear, pale gold, with heavy masses of violet cloud stretched across from north to south, and thickening as they got near the horizon. Down at their feet, near the shore, a dusky line of houses was scarcely visible; and over these lay a pale blue film of peat smoke that did not move in the still air. Then they saw the bay into which the white water runs, and they could trace the yellow glimmer of the river stretching into the island through a level valley of bog and morass. Far away toward the east lay the bulk of the island. dark green undulations of moorland and pasture; and there, in the darkness, the gable of one white house had caught the clear light of the sky, and was gleaming westward like a star. But all this was as nothing to the glory that began to shine in the southeast, where the sky was of a pale violet over the peaks of Mealasabhal and Swainabhal. There, into the beautiful dome, rose the golden crescent of the moon, warm in color, as though it still retained the last rays of the sunset. A line of quivering gold fell across Loch Roag."

Mr. Black is a conjurer with words. How he paints scenes with an intensity of coloring that rivals Monet!

"The crimson masses of heather on the gray rocks seemed to have grown richer and deeper in color, and the Barvas hills had become large and weird in the gloom. . . . And then the sky above them broke into great billows of cloud tempestuous and rounded masses of golden vapor that burned with the wild glare of the sunset. The clear spaces in the sky widened and from time to time the wind sent ragged bits of yellow cloud across the shining blue.

Whither had gone the storm? In the green of the evening sky the banks of clouds had their distant grays and purples faintly tinged with rose."

For but one more of these wonderful color effects in words must space be claimed.

"The sun had just gone down. The western sky became glorified, and in this vast breadth of shining clear green lay one long island of cloud, a pure scarlet. Then the sky overhead and the sea far below them were both of a soft roseate purple; and Fladda and Staffa and Lunga, out at the horizon, were almost black against that flood of green light."