deeper consciousness of the same kind, sures the wearing on of the night itin which our personal sympathies and self. When they sink into the socket, reverential awe of all personality are lo! it is not dark, but day. combined with the feeling of the beau

65. tiful, excited by whatever is fair, ele- The Caliph Omar, who destroyed vated, and harmonious in human will the Alexandrian library, the second in and character. In the aspect of the succession from Mahomet, and under bighest human beauty, the immediate whom many empires, and Jerusalem impression produced by physical (that itself, were added to Islam, was jouris involuntary) Nature, is inseparably neying on the borders of the Egyptian united with this last or sympathetic desert, and heard of the fame of a emotion; and the mere beauty of form holy, and wise hermit, who lived reand colour is regarded as symbolic of tired in a cave of the rocks amid the the inward and supersensuous loveli- sandy waste. Him he resolved to visit, ness. On the other hand, in the vi- hoping to learn from him where was sions of outward things, the evening concealed the buried treasure of the or nightly sky, the meditative melan- old idolatrous Kings of Egypt. When choly of a silent autumnal landscape, the Caliph, attended by several tall the blue sea rolling its foam into a and dark Arabs, and by Amrou, the rocky bay, the virgin shamefacedness conqueror of Egypt, entered the caof Nature in forest-nook, we spontane- vern, he found the hermit seated on a ously transfer in feeling and language rude bench at a stone table, which something of a purely human quality supported a written volume. His eyes to that which is properly below the were bent downwards as if in thought human, but unchangeably connected rather than study, and the Arabs were with it

, and pierced in all directions surprised to see a man of low stature, and bound together by the roots of with long and silvery hair floating our nobler life.

round a face not like theirs, tawny 59.

and scorched, but smooth and ruddy. We paint our lives in fresco. The The large and light grey eyes were soft and fusile plaster of the moment raised at their approach with a look hardens under every stroke of the of mild abstraction ; and Amrou, who brush into eternal rock.

had conversed with many men of wis60.

dom at Alexandria, was struck by the Pain has its own noble joy when it breadth of his head, the clear polish of kindles a strong consciousness of life, the forehead, the well-cut and rather before stagnant and torpid.

small nose, and the large, lightly61.

closed mouth, which seemed to quiver The more sides a man has to his with feeling, and to be ready for the mind, the more certain he may be of lively utterance of countless and sage receiving blows on all of them from proverbs and comparisons. one party or other.

“ Sage," said the Caliph, “ I see 62.

that thou wouldst not approve of the Persons immediately and univer. act of justice by which I have destroysally recognised as laudable, must be ed the storehouse of Pagan errors, either in the main negative characters, called the Library, in the city of Iskor capable of practising a good deal of ander? Thou hast a book before thee, falsehood and spurious sympathy in and I see some others in that half-open their intercourse with others.

chest, which do not resemble the Vo63.

lumes of believers." For a weak man to sympathize with “ In my youth, O Caliph! I read weakness is easy, as for a strong man many books in that Library which to sympathize with strength ; but it is thou hast destroyed, and by the study hard for the weak to sympathize with of these, and their clear presence in the strong. Far harder for the strong my mind, I became capable of susto sympathize with the weak, to bow taining, and even of profiting, by this down to weakness, and to say to it, solitude in which I live, without com“ Be thou my better strength.'

panions and with few writings." 64.

“ What profit couldst thou derive The candles of man's night are

a

apes for their amusement. The Pup- poses, he thus frustrates and dislopets are produced by the plan of dead- cates. ening, petrifying the mind, teaching

56. words by rote, compelling obedience All France, under Louis XIV., was for its own sake, and not for that of a beaten and bribed into courtiership. future moral freedom. These are the Poetry, Law, Theology, all wore courtthings that move in public only as the suits, and smoothed themselves into wires of masters and committees guide. flatterers and liars. The Muses be. But, because the life cannot be alto- came maids of honour, and stage-congether crushed and turned back, it as. fidants to royal mistresses ; Religion serts itself secretly in a sense of be. was only permitted to appear masked numbed misery and corroding hatred. in the abhorred disguise of a state The first class spoken of are those in chaplain, or a gold-laced trumpeter of whom a true ideal is misapplied. The sovereign worthlessness ; and Truth second, those in whom none is aimed and Conscience, in the mean-while, at. The third, those in whom the were fasting at Port-Royal, pining in ideal pursued is altogether false and the Bastile, fighting in the Cevennes, wretched.

or emigrating to Spitalfields. Honesty 53.

could not have where to lay its head, Speech is as a pump by which we when Falsehood, Cruelty, and insane raise and pour out the water from the Vanity had for their lacqueys and great lake of Thought-whither it pimps Racine, Bossuet, and Molière. flows back again.

The Regent Orleans was but Louis 54.

XIV. in undress and half-intoxicated, There is a kind of social civilisation and Louis XV. the same type, drunk which rounds the rough and broken to stupidity. But while the family was stones into smooth shapeliness, but sinking from generation to generation also into monotonous uniformity, into utter lethargy, the nation was There is also a farther and better kind awakening from its sleep, till rising which again roughens the pebbles, not, and finding itself starved, bruised, and however, to reproduce their former shackled, it burst the remaining bonds, rude diversities, but to engrave them and strangled for ever the corpse-like with divine heads and figures and sig. royalty which it found lying beside it. nificant mottoes.

57. 55.

Life of any kind is a confounding When we see the place to which mystery; nay, that which we comsome natural Reality is degraded by monly do not call life, the principle of the hands of man,—the stately tree to existence in a stone or a drop of wabe a dead wayside post, the fierce and ter, is an inscrutable wonder. That fleet wild ass of the desert to be a bro- in the infinity of time and space any ken and starved drudge, we cannot thing should be, should have a distinct but reflect that this wreck was once existence, should be more than nogreat and goodly, and possessed a thing! The thought of an immensa wondrous inward endowment of inde- abysmal Nothing is awful, only less pendent life and power, was born out so than that of All and God; and of the eternal Infinite into the sad and thus a grain of sand being a fact, a narrow round of Time, where men, reality, rises before us into something its fellow-denizens of Time, have thus prodigious, immeasurable-a farth crushed and ruined it. But poor as is opposes and countrthe place and function of each living mensity of thing which men enchain and use, be when thus no longo by itself, yet the istence, with a vances, is one than the we origi of

ness.

deeper consciousness of the same kind, sures the wearing on of the night itin which our personal sympathies and self. When they sink into the socket, reverential awe of all personality are lo! it is not dark, but day. combined with the feeling of the beau

65. tiful, excited by whatever is fair, ele- The Caliph Omar, who destroyed vated, and harmonious in human will the Alexandrian library, the second in and character. In the aspect of the succession from Mahomet, and under highest human beauty, the immediate whom many empires, and Jerusalem impression produced by physical (that itself, were added to Islam, was jouris involuntary) Nature, is inseparably neying on the borders of the Egyptian united with this last or sympathetic desert, and heard of the fame of a emotion; and the mere beauty of form holy, and wise hermit, who lived reand colour is regarded as symbolic of tired in a cave of the rocks amid the the inward and supersensuous loveli- saudy waste. Him he resolved to visit,

On the other hand, in the vi. hoping to learn from him where was sions of outward things, the evening concealed the buried treasure of the or nightly sky, the meditative melan- old idolatrous Kings of Egypt. When choly of a silent autumnal landscape, the Caliph, attended by several tall the blue sea rolling its foam into a and dark Arabs, and by Amrou, the rocky bay, the virgin shamefacedness conqueror of Egypt, entered the caof Nature in forest-nook, we spontane- vern, he found the hermit seated on a ously transfer in feeling and language rude bench at a stone table, which something of a purely human quality supported a written volume. His eyes to that which is properly below the were bent downwards as if in thought human, but unchangeably connected rather than study, and the Arabs were with it, and pierced in all directions surprised to see a man of low stature, and bound together by the roots of with long and silvery hair floating our nobler life.

round a face not like theirs, tawny 59.

and scorched, but smooth and ruddy. We paint our lives in fresco. The The large and light grey eyes were soft and fusile plaster of the moment raised at their approach with a look hardens under every stroke of the of mild abstraction; and Amrou, who brush into eternal rock.

had conversed with many men of wis60.

dom at Alexandria, was struck by the Pain has its own noble joy when it breadth of his head, the clear polish of kindles a strong consciousness of life, the forehead, the well-cut and rather before stagnant and torpid.

small nose, and the large, lightly61.

closed mouth, which seemed to quiver The more sides a man has to his with feeling, and to be ready for the mind, the more certain he may be of lively utterance of countless and sage receiving blows on all of them from proverbs and comparisons. one party or other.

“ Sage,” said the Caliph, “ I see 62.

that thou wouldst not approve of the Persons immediately and univer- act of justice by which I have destroysally recognised as laudable, must be ed the storehouse of Pagan errors, either in the main negative characters, called the Library, in the city of Iskor capable of practising a good deal of ander ? Thou hast a book before thee, falsehood and spurious sympathy in and I see some others in that half-open their intercourse with others.

chest, which do not resemble the Vo63.

lumes of believers." For a weak man to sympathize with “ In my youth, O Caliph! I read weakness is easy, as for a strong man many books in that Library which to sympathize with strength ; but it is thou hast destroyed, and by the study hard for the weak to sympathize with of these, and their clear presence in the strong. Far harder for the strong my mind, I became capable of susto sympathize with the weak, to bow taining, and even of profiting, by this down to weakness, and to say to it, solitude in which I live, without com" Be thou my better strength. panions and with few writings." 64.

" What profit couldst thou derive The candles of man's night are from those infidel volumes ? The Kodoubtless burning out, but, like Al- ran teachs the one God, and to know fred's candle-clocks, their decay mea

“ The Koran indeed teaches truly to draw it from the flesh. Her tears that there is one God; and because fall upon his cheek, and his hand is we know that he exists, we should be red with her blood." careful to understand him as display- " Look again, and tell me what ed in all his works. Of these the no- thou seest. blest is man, and of his mind we have “I see a mountain covered with so many several pictures in every book, trees, fields, and villages, and, by Al. however mistaken its doctrines; and lah! with Pagan temples. But lo! in books can we also learn more clear- an earthquake heaves the whole, and ly and fully to understand what other half the houses are overthrown or works of God inferior to man, but still swallowed up. The survivors arm most wonderful, reveal his will and themselves for battle, and a fierce conpower.

flict rages for the enjoyment of those “Ah! shameless unbeliever !" ex. of their possessions which remain, claimed Omar, and stroked his beard, Fire spreads through the ruined vine"now would I order thee to be slain yards, woods, and houses; and by its upon the spot, but that I have need of light many men are slain, and women thy wisdom for the good of the faith- and children made captives. Some of ful and of the true faith. Tell me those combatants, o Dervish, are sons where are concealed the riches of the of the giants, and the maidens whom Pharaohs, and I will spare thy life." I look upon are lovely as the damsels

“I know not that I can teach thee this, of Paradise." but what I can show thee, thou shalt “ Look now again. What seest know." Then turning to Amrou, the thou?" fierce and conquering general of the “ A lonely waste. The grey desert Moslem armies—" Fetch me, I pray spreads far and wide, save where a thee, a handful of sand from the de. dark sea beats heavily on its coast. sert, at the mouth of the cave.” The Not a ship, not a camel, not a house warrior started, and his eyes turned is there. But among heaps of carved disdainfully on the hermit. But they stones and fallen pillars, such as might sunk under his quiet gaze, and Amrou build a royal city, a white-haired, wiwent and brought the sand. The hér- thered man sits with his eyes upon the mit received it into his palm, and turn- ground. A vulture is perched upon ing to the Caliph, desired him to pick a mound near, and looks at him; and out a single grain, and lay it on the a jackal eyes him from a shattered blade of Amrou's dagger. The bright tomb, and gnaws a scull. The wind weapon which had so often been red of the desert has blown the sand over with blood, was drawn from its shoath, his feet, and almost to his knees, but and the Caliph held it in his hand. he cares not to rise and free himself. Then following the hermit alone into Dervish ! God must have fallen asleep the dark interior of the cave, he plac- in heaven above that place, and left it ed upon the blade, held horizontally, to die utterly." a single grain of sand. On this, he " What dost thou now behold ?” fixed his eyes. In the deep gloom, “I see around a broad bay of the the grain brightened like a spark of ocean, a range of green hills with fire, and grew larger and larger, even streams and torrents, and gardens as the brightest planet of evening, and reaching to the skies. Amid these it paused not in its expansion, till it are palaces, with pillars built doubtless seemed a luminous ball of mild pale by the genii, and along the wide terfire.

races in front of the buildings, sons of “ Look steadily," said the hermit; wisdom, and daughters of beauty are “ fear not; and tell me what thou walking or leaning.

One is a storyseest."

teller, who has gathered round him a “ I see," said the Caliph, “a small crowd of listeners, young and old. goat-skin tent, underthe shade of rocks, Another seems to have just shaped a among palm-trees and wild vines. A figure of a woman out of stone. She man, naked save his girdle, sleeps in is more than balf paked, but looks as the cool, with his head upon a dark if none dare think her so. On the and sad-looking woman's lap, and two torch which she holds up in her hand, a children are not far off. A thorn has flame of green fire burns like a bright pierced the foot of the infant gir), and star in the sunshine round her. A the boy, her brother, is endeavouring band of children are wreathing flowers

a

a

a

66

and laying them before the Pagan one of the spirits of the past, but as if image, which, not smiling, seems to they were all combined in him.” delight in their smiles. The workman « Look once more, O Caliph!” looks dissatisfied, though rejoicing as Juggler ! there is but a grain of a bridegroom who has won his bride, sand." but mourns that he cannot offer to her “ Thine eyes are weary of looking, more precious gifts than all his sub- not the visions of displaying them. stance. Elsewhere, I see living figures selves. Thou canst see no more this glancing among the trees. To the day. But if all this be visible in a quay which borders the shore, some grain of sand by the open and fresh barks with deep blue sails are hasten- eye of man, what sighis beyond this ing; and one even now touches the thinkest thou that there must be in porphyry wall, and pours out gold and a man himself? Of these sights, a porspices--by Allah! I smell the sweet- tion are in every book recorded." ness of Yamen-on the smooth stones. “ Slave!” said the Caliph—"tell Nay, as the sun goes down, I hear the me not of books, but of hidden treafaint song of the mariners, and the sures, or I will have thee impaled ere music of stringed instruments tinkling an hour is past." in reply from the distant mountain “ I have told thee of far more than side."

thou thoughtest. The treasures of the " Is there nought more than this?" Pharaohs would show thee little of

“ Yea, high upon the mountain I what thou hast seen in that grain of see a mosque of another fashion than sand. Farewell, O Caliph! I have ours, surrounded by a place of tombs, been ordained but to live till I bad with many graves and cypresses. High seen and known thee, and then to deabove them all rises a shape, silvery part. In that world where the hearts as the flashing of a scymitar, or of of men shall be more open to each water, gigantic, kingly, with a mant- other than their books are here, it led head, and long folds covering his will be read in mine that I hold theo whole form. But he stretches his ignorant and headstrong, but still a great moving hands over the palaces man, and, therefore, capable of good. and bay, and flakes of pale fire fall Farewell ! I am but a grain of sand; from them, and kindle every window bide my corpse under those of the deand capital of a pillar, and flash from sert before me.” every face, and shoot again upwards, The hermit sank on the rocky floor and beam as stars in the dark sky. of the cave, at Omar's feet, quite dead. The mantled genie looks not like any