W. D. Howells, entitled "Hope," that though it closes on Ulysses' note of "perhaps," one cannot forbear quoting it, for a "perhaps" like this, attached to a hope arrayed in hues so fresh and vivid, carries as much comfort with it as many a dogmatic assurance :—

"We sailed and sailed upon the desert sea
Where for whole days we alone seemed to be.
At last we saw a dim, vague line arise
Between the lonely billows and the skies,
That grew and grew until it wore the shape
Of cove and inlet, promontory and cape;
Then hills and valleys, rivers, fields and woods,
Steeples and roofs, and village neighbourhoods."

And the thought came over him—

"Some time I shall embark

Upon a sea more desert and more dark
Than ever this was, and between the skies
And lonely billows I shall see arise

Another world out of that waste and lapse,
Like yonder land ! . . .”

'They are ill discoverers," says Bacon, "that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea." Keats perceived "the budding morrow in midnight." "Verily," exclaimed Carlyle, in a passage worthy of his own beloved Richter, "this whole world grows magical and hypermagical to me; death written on all, yet everlasting life also written on all.-Death! the unknown sea of rest! who knows what harmonies lie there to wrap us in softness, in eternal peace?— The half-moon, clear as silver, looked out as from eternity, and the great dawn came streaming up."

"Now God be praised, that to believing souls
Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.":

I

Nor only to believing souls. Even those who part with Faith still cling to Hope. And Hope is a more pitiful angel than Faith, and will sometimes stoop to whisper words of comfort in the ears of those whom her loftier sister has forsaken. This may be the secret of that passion of gratitude which has been expressed by so many for the spirit of Hope, as if she were indeed a living spirit.

"White-handed Hope,

Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings!"

cries Milton. And Hogg, in a sweeter and more intimate strain,

"O, seraph Hope! that here below

Can nothing dear to the last forego !

When we see the forms we fain would save
Wear step by step adown to the grave,

Still Hope a lambent gleam will shed

Over the last, the dying bed.

And even, as now, when the soul's away,

It flutters and lingers o'er the clay!

O Hope! thy range was never expounded!

'Tis not by the grave that thou art bounded!"

·To Campbell, the bard of hope, she is the "angel of life," and he can find no words sweet enough to sing her praise. Her eyes are clearer than Wisdom's

own :

"With thee, sweet Hope! resides the heavenly light
That pours remotest rapture on the sight.”

When man had forfeited his Eden and become a prey to every form of evil,

All, all forsook the friendless guilty mind,

But Hope, the charmer, lingered still behind."

It is Hope alone that can soothe "the tears of love,' and it is to her faithful charge that Heaven entrusts the hour of death :

:

Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey
The morning dream of life's eternal day."

The happiest would be in evil case without hope. It is in happiness perhaps most often that the thought of our uncertain hold of all that seems most truly ours

comes over us.

"Oh, what were life,

Even in the warm and summer-light of joy,
Without those hopes that, like refreshing gales
At evening from the sea, come o'er the soul,
Breathed from the ocean of eternity!" '

I

And if even the happy are dependent on hope, what is it to the sad and wretched; to those who no longer have an earthly hope to cherish, but only that hope of hopes, . . . eternal bright Hereafter?" 2

This motive it is that underlies Hood's musical lines" To Hope." The harp to which she sang in life's bright morning has long lain by neglected, and all her earthly dreams of bliss have come to naught But there is still Heaven left to sing of—

'Another life-spring there adorns

Another youth, without the dread

Of cruel care .

Oh! there are realms of welcome day,
A world where tears are wiped away!
Then be thy flight among the skies:

Take, then, oh! take the skylark's wing
And leave dull earth, and heavenward rise
O'er all its tearful clouds and sing

IX

THE ETERNITY OF LOVE PROTESTED

"True love can never change his seat,
Nor did he ever love that could retreat :
That noble flame which my breast keeps alive
Shall still survive

When my soul's fled,

Nor shall my love die when my body's dead.”

Francis Beaumont.

THE argument of love is almost universally considered as the most powerful argument there is for immortality. It is love more than aught else which makes us feel the presence of the Eternal within us. In the hours when love's divine flame burns clearest in our hearts, it is then we feel that our love and that we, because of our love, are imperishable. So triumphant is this sense of love's immortality in certain souls that they can look straight in Death's face and defy him.

Lowell expresses this mood—a mood as rare as it is lofty, in a sonnet of extraordinary vigour :

My love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die ;
Albeit I ask no fairer life than this, .

Yet care I not where in Eternity

Love hath so purified my being's core,
Meseems I scarcely should be startled even
To find some morn, that thou hadst gone before;
Since with thy love, this knowledge too was given,
That they who love are but one step from heaven.”

The seventeenth-century Puritan poet, George Wither, anticipates (like Mrs. Browning) an increase of love, when love should be set free from the bonds and trammels of earth :

"No death can end our love. Nay, when we die

Our souls, that now in chains and fetters lie,
Shall meet more freely."

With the same hope did Cowper comfort his sorrowful spirit which was so open, even in its most despairing hours, to the consolations of affection. Writing to his cousin, Lady Hesketh, he expresses the trust that their friendship which no length of absence could chill, might be renewed in the world to come. "For you must know," he says, "that I should not love you half so well if I did not believe you would be my friend to eternity. There is not room enough for friendship to unfold itself in full bloom in such a nook of life as this." And he concludes, with a whimsical pointing of the conventional "for ever with which we are wont to assert our epistolary regards "Therefore I am, and must, and will be, Yours for ever."

A scarcely less troubled spirit, Richard Baxter, wrote in the same vein of tender human affection, half excusing himself, as it were, for his delight in earthly friendships, with the plea that to such friendships belongs the dignity of immortality. If he