release is expressed with admirable fidelity in the toilworn yet sinewy frame, in the weary yet joyful face. This wonderful sketch is worth a hundred discourses. We cannot penetrate the thick gloom; but to the open eyes of the dead, 'the shadow of death is turned into the morning.' So spake the Hebrew poet; the English poet has put a like hope into different words,—

Death has made

His darkness beautiful with thee.

One word more. It is noticeable that the writers who, raised aloft on the wings of imaginative inspiration, have looked most closely upon the conditions of the invisible world, find but one ground on which to stay the assurance of immortality. 'Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away y:' but 'charity never faileth.' The heaven of the glorified body, wherever situated, however reached, is a reality. The love which moves heaven and all the stars, which knits earth to God, which makes our vain and empty life a blessed and precious possession, assures us that this is no cunningly-devised fable. And the love which never reached its earthly close will most surely find in that Land of Promise its fruition and its crown.

'Is it not so? in most sober earnest, must not this be the case? Consider only for one moment, I beseech you. We grow faint and weary when striving to pierce the veil which hangs between us and the host who have crossed into the kingdom of the dead. Whither are

they scattered whom we knew upon the earth? How is that chosen band to be reunited? how are they to

The

be gathered together once more from all the margins of the illimitable universe? Dante, fixing his eyes on the eyes of Beatrice, found himself in heaven. 'I was transported by the attraction of love,' he says. attraction of love!' This is the magnet which draws the wandering spirits together. This is the sole talisman which they obey. On this reality alone the unrobed soul can rest. To it the ghosts of other generations are unsubstantial phantoms; it needs the sunshine of an earth-born affection to warm it into happiLife is so brittle that we fear sometimes to love too much. It is perilous, it seems, to venture our all on so frail a bark. Yet are we most foolish to harbour such a fear; for what welcome will the next world give us, if we garner no love in this? We may be sure that only the mightiest passions can survive the shock of death, can pass through the dismal portal and across the dreary river, and from among the souls, thick as leaves in Vallombrosa,' of unnumbered and unremembered generations, draw the beloved to our side.

ness.

Here Doctor Diamond folded up his manuscript, and turned round sharply upon his brother, the Commodore. The Captain was the only one who ventured to criticise on such occasions, and his criticisms, in their utter simplicity, sometimes hit hard. But to-day he merely remarked in an under tone, 'The best piece of

Memorial Poetry that I know is Dr. Fisher's epitaph at Rattray:

Here Dr. Fisher lies interred,

Who filled the half of this kirkyard.'

Whether the shaft was aimed at his brother it was impossible to guess, but we all admitted that the epitaph was an admirable adaptation of Wren's :-'Si monumentum quæris, circumspice!' 'That was my achievement in this world; whatever may be its worth, or its reverse of worth, give me the benefit of it; do not defraud me of my dues.'

Then our talk wandered away, and when it returned, I found that we were speculating where the domus ultima of each of us should be placed. 'Bury me by the bracken-bush that grows on yonder lily lee,' the Doctor murmured, in the words of the great ballad. I fancied that I should like to be planted under the old oak in the Chase-the Lovers' Oak, they call it; but Letty declared that she must lie within hearing of the

sea,

Upon the beachèd verge of the salt flood.

'Ay,' replied the Captain, 'Letty is a true tar. For myself, I would fain hear the night-wind rattle through the rigging. There is a green knowe ayont the Suitor's Seat; a man that's laid there gets a grand out-look across the sea, o' moonlight nights.'

But at this point the Doctor interfered, declaring that such speculations were unprofitable, and that it was well, when the brains were out, the man should die.

As soon as he was done with his body, it would become a matter of perfect indifference to him how it was disposed of. Then he added,

'Unless you are prepared to fire St. Paul's, or write the Odyssey, or paint the Transfiguration, or buy the Times newspaper, it is useless to strive with oblivion. Much better give up the battle, at once and for ever. When I look on tombstones and immortelles, and all such rubbish, I am reminded of the unlucky people who are struggling to keep themselves respectable. It is of no use. The water rises above their heads. Do what they will, they are sinking step by step. Why not rather be thankful for release? The heart-burn is cooled, the throbbing is quieted, at last; let us lie down gratefully, and be forgotten.'

Here he was interrupted by the dinner-bell.

70

I

IV.

COMMODORE DIAMOND.

AM sometimes very jealous of the Commodore,-both Letty and Sissy are so uncommonly fond of their uncle. Yet I cannot wonder that they love the good, wise, simple-hearted sailor.

Captain Diamond was absent from his native country for the best part of sixty years. He was a mere boy when they sent him to sea; he is a grey-headed man now, but his eye is not dimmed, nor his natural force abated, and, like many seamen, he retains not a little of his youthfulness. He lost his left arm in one of the swampy river-fights of Africa; but aided by art, which has screwed a sort of imitation arm of rather a rude sort on the stump, he can cast a salmon-fly, and bring down a brace of grouse, right and left, to this day. Except for his grey hair and his stump, he is very much what he was five-and-fifty years ago. He has taken up life precisely where he left it off on going on board the Wasp about the beginning of the century. He had been brought up among the hills, at a time when gentle and simple spoke the same language; and the Doric which he had then acquired, in spite of a