Nature seemed to be in vital harmony with the love they felt and the vows they made. That moment, one and infinite, gathered up all the blessedness that time or eternity could bestow. And the prize he won, when she gave herself to him!——why, he -why, he says that

A man should strive and agonize,

And taste a veriest hell on earth

For the hope of such a prize.

The very essence of the man's personality was concentrated into that hour; he was born on purpose to love this woman; and out of this love was to be unfolded every divine capacity of character and genius. Living the very life he desired for himself, he was also able to help the great purpose of God in the universal plan. Then he was made, then he knew himself, then his soul awakened into clear consciousness of the divine will concerning him, and of his own joyful co-operation with the infinite purpose.

I am named and known by that moment's feat;
There took my station and degree;

So grew my own small life complete,

As nature obtained her best of me

One born to love you, sweet!

So earth has gained by one man the more,

And the gain of earth must be heaven's gain too!

And the whole is well worth thinking o'er

When Autumn comes: which I mean to do

One day, as I said before.

And, while this love seems perfected on earth, he is certain it will be propagated into eternity. How will the change of death, he ponders, affect this union of

their souls? Surely, since it is a union of souls, the decay of the body cannot touch such an indissoluble bond.

Think, when our one soul understands

The great word which makes all things new,
When earth breaks up and heaven expands,
How will the change strike me and you
In the house not made with hands?

And then he thinks how his wife has led him upward in this world above all baser things,-how she has purified and perfected his soul; and he prays that in heaven, too, she may be his guardian angel, still to go before him, revealing the path of light, and expounding the mysteries of eternity.

Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,

Your heart anticipate my heart,

You must be just before, in fine,

See, and make me see, for your part,
New depths in the divine!

I cannot help recalling how that thought of Woman leading Man into the supreme purity and joy is brought out by two other poets. In the second part of Goethe's drama, Faust is represented passing away from earth; his love is now transfigured from selfish desire into divine attraction; the woman he wronged is now a ministering spirit; the glorified Margaret comes to lead the wandering man into heaven; as the angels express it in their mystic chorus:

All things transitory

But as symbols are sent :
Earth's insufficiency

Here grows to event:

The Indescribable,

Here it is done:

The Woman-Soul leadeth us

Upward and on.*

And the Poet Dante, in his New Life and also in his Paradise, teaches the same truth. His passion for the sainted Beatrice rises into the ideal of heavenly purity, and she guides his way to the celestial vision of that Eternal Love, which "moves the sun in heaven and all the stars." Just as solemn and beautiful was Browning's devotion to his perfect wife.

It seems inevitable that such an absolute union of souls should survive the stroke of death. But what shall we say concerning the unfulfilled affections, which are cut short by death before the great vow can be ratified? Such love, Browning says, must also find its consummation hereafter; and life, surely, needs nothing more to sustain it than such a boundless hope of everlasting re-union. In that lovely lyric, Evelyn Hope, he tells us of a noble, cultured man, who conceives the purest affection for a beautiful maiden. As yet, she is too young for words of love to be whispered in her ear. Her placid life must not yet be disturbed by such a confession as he longs to make. He watches her grow more beautiful and gracious every day, and waits until the hour when he will crown his life by asking her to be his. But, alas! before the hour arrived, the young girl faded and died. God's hand beckoned her, and she must go-go away from earth with all its unfulfilled promises of womanhood and

* Das Ewig-Weibliche

Zieht uns hinan.

wifehood. Is, then, his love destroyed by this stroke of death? Was this great hope in vain? No! the man believes in God; this love is God's gift, which can never be destroyed nor recalled. He was willing to wait on earth; it is only, now, to wait a little longer, and again he shall find that beautiful soul. He declares it is no mere guess, or longing, or vague anticipation, this thing is a CERTAINTY. Love is not a mortal thing at the mercy of death; and though his beloved has gone to sleep, one day she "will wake and remember and understand."

I know of no poet who has sung of love in manlier, purer, loftier strains. With him love is the creative power which sustains the universe. That power, which holds all things in organic bonds, reaches its finest expression in the conscious emotion of human souls; and it mounts into its supreme energy when Man and Woman claim each other in a mutual self-surrender, whereby love not only achieves the creative purpose in the race on earth, but also makes two souls heirs of an infinite beatitude. Both in the earthly plan and in the heavenly perfection we must confess, that, of all the gifts and graces of humanity, the greatest is LOVE.

If all the pens that ever poets held

Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts,
And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,
Their minds, and muses on admired themes;
If all the heavenly quintessence they still *
From their immortal flowers of poesy,
Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit;
If these had made one poem's period,

And all combined in beauty's worthiness,

Yet should there hover in their restless heads

One thought, one grace, one wonder at the least,
Which into words no virtue can digest.

Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Part First, v. 1.

1. THE FUNCTION OF ART.

GREAT genius gives us the impression of a kind of omnipotence. Victor Hugo says that genius is a promontory stretching out into the Infinite; and there seems to be scarcely any limit to the extent of its power to explore the secrets of Nature and Man. We are sometimes tempted to fancy that Shakspere might have done everything he had chosen to attempt.

* Distil.