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deeper consciousness of the same kind, in which our personal sympathies and reverential awe of all personality are combined with the feeling of the beautiful, excited by whatever is fair, elevated, and harmonious in human will and character. In the aspect of the highest human beauty, the immediate impression produced by physical (that is involuntary) Nature, is inseparably united with this last or sympathetic emotion; and the mere beauty of form and colour is regarded as symbolic of the inward and supersensuous loveliness. On the other hand, in the visions of outward things, the evening or nightly sky, the meditative melancholy of a silent autumnal landscape, the blue sea rolling its foam into a rocky bay, the virgin shamefacedness of Nature in forest-nook, we spontaneously transfer in feeling and language something of a purely human quality to that which is properly below the human, but unchangeably connected with it, and pierced in all directions and bound together by the roots of

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Persons immediately and universally recognised as laudable, must be either in the main negative characters, or capable of practising a good deal of falsehood and spurious sympathy in their intercourse with others.

63.

For a weak man to sympathize with weakness is easy, as for a strong man to sympathize with strength; but it is hard for the weak to sympathize with the strong. Far harder for the strong to sympathize with the weak, to bow down to weakness, and to say to it, "Be thou my better strength.'

64.

The candles of man's night are doubtless burning out, but, like Alfred's candle-clocks, their decay meaVOL, XLIV. NO. CCLXXIV.

sures the wearing on of the night itself. When they sink into the socket, lo! it is not dark, but day.

65.

The Caliph Omar, who destroyed the Alexandrian library, the second in succession from Mahomet, and under whom many empires, and Jerusalem itself, were added to Islam, was journeying on the borders of the Egyptian desert, and heard of the fame of a holy and wise hermit, who lived retired in a cave of the rocks amid the sandy waste. Him he resolved to visit, hoping to learn from him where was concealed the buried treasure of the old idolatrous Kings of Egypt. When the Caliph, attended by several tall and dark Arabs, and by Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, entered the cavern, he found the hermit seated on a rude bench at a stone table, which supported a written volume. His eyes were bent downwards as if in thought rather than study, and the Arabs were surprised to see a man of low stature, with long and silvery hair floating round a face not like theirs, tawny and scorched, but smooth and ruddy. The large and light grey eyes were raised at their approach with a look of mild abstraction; and Amrou, who had conversed with many men of wisdom at Alexandria, was struck by the breadth of his head, the clear polish of the forehead, the well-cut and rather small nose, and the large, lightlyclosed mouth, which seemed to quiver with feeling, and to be ready for the lively utterance of countless and sage proverbs and comparisons.

"Sage," said the Caliph, "I see that thou wouldst not approve of the act of justice by which I have destroyed the storehouse of Pagan errors, called the Library, in the city of Iskander? Thou hast a book before thee, and I see some others in that half-open chest, which do not resemble the Volumes of believers."

"In my youth, O Caliph! I read many books in that Library which thou hast destroyed, and by the study of these, and their clear presence in my mind, I became capable of sustaining, and even of profiting, by this solitude in which I live, without companions and with few writings.'

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"What profit couldst thou derive from those infidel volumes? The Koran teachs the one God, and to know him is to know all."

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apes for their amusement. The Puppets are produced by the plan of deadening, petrifying the mind, teaching words by rote, compelling obedience for its own sake, and not for that of a future moral freedom. These are the things that move in public only as the wires of masters and committees guide. But, because the life cannot be altogether crushed and turned back, it asserts itself secretly in a sense of benumbed misery and corroding hatred. The first class spoken of are those in whom a true ideal is misapplied. The second, those in whom none is aimed at. The third, those in whom the ideal pursued is altogether false and wretched.

53.

Speech is as a pump by which we raise and pour out the water from the great lake of Thought-whither it flows back again.

54.

There is a kind of social civilisation which rounds the rough and broken stones into smooth shapeliness, but also into monotonous uniformity. There is also a farther and better kind which again roughens the pebbles, not, however, to reproduce their former rude diversities, but to engrave them with divine heads and figures and sig. nificant mottoes.

55.

When we see the place to which some natural Reality is degraded by the hands of man,-the stately tree to be a dead wayside post, the fierce and fleet wild ass of the desert to be a broken and starved drudge, we cannot but reflect that this wreck was once great and goodly, and possessed a wondrous inward endowment of independent life and power, was born out of the eternal Infinite into the sad and narrow round of Time, where men, its fellow-denizens of Time, have thus crushed and ruined it. But poor as is the place and function of each living thing which men enchain and use, when thus no longe for by itself, yet the istence, with all

poses, he thus frustrates and dislo

cates.

56.

All France, under Louis XIV., was beaten and bribed into courtiership. Poetry, Law, Theology, all wore courtsuits, and smoothed themselves into flatterers and liars. The Muses became maids of honour, and stage-confidants to royal mistresses; Religion was only permitted to appear masked in the abhorred disguise of a state chaplain, or a gold-laced trumpeter of sovereign worthlessness; and Truth and Conscience, in the mean-while, were fasting at Port-Royal, pining in the Bastile, fighting in the Cevennes, or emigrating to Spitalfields. Honesty could not have where to lay its head, when Falsehood, Cruelty, and insane Vanity had for their lacqueys and pimps Racine, Bossuet, and Molière. The Regent Orleans was but Louis XIV. in undress and half-intoxicated, and Louis XV. the same type, drunk to stupidity. But while the family was sinking from generation to generation into utter lethargy, the nation was awakening from its sleep, till rising and finding itself starved, bruised, and shackled, it burst the remaining bonds, and strangled for ever the corpse-like royalty which it found lying beside it.

57.

Life of any kind is a confounding mystery; nay, that which we commonly do not call life, the principle of existence in a stone or a drop of water, is an inscrutable wonder. That in the infinity of time and space any thing should be, should have a distinct existence, should be more than nothing! The thought of an immense abysmal Nothing is awful, only less so than that of All and God; and thus a grain of sand being a fact, a reality, rises before us into something prodigious, immeasurable-a fact th opposes and countemensity of

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deeper consciousness of the same kind, in which our personal sympathies and reverential awe of all personality are combined with the feeling of the beautiful, excited by whatever is fair, elevated, and harmonious in human will and character. In the aspect of the highest human beauty, the immediate impression produced by physical (that is involuntary) Nature, is inseparably united with this last or sympathetic emotion; and the mere beauty of form and colour is regarded as symbolic of the inward and supersensuous loveliness. On the other hand, in the visions of outward things, the evening or nightly sky, the meditative melancholy of a silent autumnal landscape, the blue sea rolling its foam into a rocky bay, the virgin shamefacedness of Nature in forest-nook, we spontaneously transfer in feeling and language something of a purely human quality to that which is properly below the human, but unchangeably connected with it, and pierced in all directions and bound together by the roots of our nobler life.

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sures the wearing on of the night itself. When they sink into the socket, lo! it is not dark, but day.

65.

The Caliph Omar, who destroyed the Alexandrian library, the second in succession from Mahomet, and under whom many empires, and Jerusalem itself, were added to Islam, was journeying on the borders of the Egyptian desert, and heard of the fame of a holy and wise hermit, who lived retired in a cave of the rocks amid the sandy waste. Him he resolved to visit, hoping to learn from him where was concealed the buried treasure of the old idolatrous Kings of Egypt. When the Caliph, attended by several tall and dark Arabs, and by Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, entered the cavern, he found the hermit seated on a rude bench at a stone table, which supported a written volume. His eyes were bent downwards as if in thought rather than study, and the Arabs were surprised to see a man of low stature, with long and silvery hair floating round a face not like theirs, tawny and scorched, but smooth and ruddy. The large and light grey eyes were raised at their approach with a look of mild abstraction; and Amrou, who had conversed with many men of wisdom at Alexandria, was struck by the breadth of his head, the clear polish of the forehead, the well-cut and rather small nose, and the large, lightlyclosed mouth, which seemed to quiver with feeling, and to be ready for the lively utterance of countless and sage proverbs and comparisons.

"Sage," said the Caliph, "I see that thou wouldst not approve of the act of justice by which I have destroyed the storehouse of Pagan errors, called the Library, in the city of Iskander? Thou hast a book before thee, and I see some others in that half-open chest, which do not resemble the Volumes of believers."

"In my youth, O Caliph! I read many books in that Library which thou hast destroyed, and by the study of these, and their clear presence in my mind, I became capable of sustaining, and even of profiting, by this solitude in which I live, without companions and with few writings."

"What profit couldst thou derive from those infidel volumes? The Koran teachs the one God, and to know him is to know all."

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"The Koran indeed teaches truly that there is one God; and because we know that he exists, we should be careful to understand him as displayed in all his works. Of these the noblest is man, and of his mind we have so many several pictures in every book, however mistaken its doctrines; and in books can we also learn more clearly and fully to understand what other works of God inferior to man, but still most wonderful, reveal his will and power."

"Ah! shameless unbeliever!" exclaimed Omar, and stroked his beard, "now would I order thee to be slain upon the spot, but that I have need of thy wisdom for the good of the faithful and of the true faith. Tell me where are concealed the riches of the Pharaohs, and I will spare thy life."

"I know not that I can teach thee this, but what I can show thee, thou shalt know." Then turning to Amrou, the fierce and conquering general of the Moslem armies "Fetch me, I pray thee, a handful of sand from the desert, at the mouth of the cave." The warrior started, and his eyes turned disdainfully on the hermit. But they sunk under his quiet gaze, and Amrou went and brought the sand. The hermit received it into his palm, and turning to the Caliph, desired him to pick out a single grain, and lay it on the blade of Amrou's dagger. The bright weapon which had so often been red with blood, was drawn from its sheath, and the Caliph held it in his hand. Then following the hermit alone into the dark interior of the cave, he placed upon the blade, held horizontally, a single grain of sand. On this, he fixed his eyes. In the deep gloom, the grain brightened like a spark of fire, and grew larger and larger, even as the brightest planet of evening, and it paused not in its expansion, till it seemed a luminous ball of mild pale

fire.

"Look steadily," said the hermit; "fear not; and tell me what thou scest."

"I see," said the Caliph, "a small goat-skin tent, under the shade of rocks, among palm-trees and wild vines. A man, naked save his girdle, sleeps in the cool, with his head upon a dark and sad-looking woman's lap, and two children are not far off. A thorn has pierced the foot of the infant girl, and the boy, her brother, is endeavouring

Her tears

to draw it from the flesh. fall upon his cheek, and his hand is red with her blood."

"Look again, and tell me what thou seest."

"I see a mountain covered with trees, fields, and villages, and, by Allah! with Pagan temples. But lo! an earthquake heaves the whole, and half the houses are overthrown or swallowed up. The survivors arm themselves for battle, and a fierce conflict rages for the enjoyment of those of their possessions which remain. Fire spreads through the ruined vineyards, woods, and houses; and by its light many men are slain, and women and children made captives. Some of those combatants, O Dervish, are sons of the giants, and the maidens whom I look upon are lovely as the damsels of Paradise."

"Look now again. What seest thou?"

the

"A lonely waste. The grey desert spreads far and wide, save where a dark sea beats heavily on its coast. Not a ship, not a camel, not a house is there. But among heaps of carved stones and fallen pillars, such as might build a royal city, a white-haired, withered man sits with his eyes upon ground. A vulture is perched upon a mound near, and looks at him; and a jackal eyes him from a shattered tomb, and gnaws a scull. The wind of the desert has blown the sand over his feet, and almost to his knees, but he cares not to rise and free himself. Dervish! God must have fallen asleep in heaven above that place, and left it to die utterly."

"What dost thou now behold?"

"I see around a broad bay of the ocean, a range of green hills with streams and torrents, and gardens reaching to the skies. Amid these are palaces, with pillars built doubtless by the genii, and along the wide terraces in front of the buildings, sons of wisdom, and daughters of beauty are walking or leaning. One is a storyteller, who has gathered round him a crowd of listeners, young and old. Another seems to have just shaped a figure of a woman out of stone. She is more than half naked, but looks as if none dare think her so. On the torch which she holds up in her hand, a flame of green fire burns like a bright star in the sunshine round her. A band of children are wreathing flowers

and laying them before the Pagan image, which, not smiling, seems to delight in their smiles. The workman looks dissatisfied, though rejoicing as a bridegroom who has won his bride, but mourns that he cannot offer to her more precious gifts than all his substance. Elsewhere, I see living figures glancing among the trees. To the quay which borders the shore, some barks with deep blue sails are hastening; and one even now touches the porphyry wall, and pours out gold and spices-by Allah! I smell the sweetness of Yamen-on the smooth stones. Nay, as the sun goes down, I hear the faint song of the mariners, and the music of stringed instruments tinkling in reply from the distant mountain side."

"Is there nought more than this?" "Yea, high upon the mountain I see a mosque of another fashion than ours, surrounded by a place of tombs, with many graves and cypresses. High above them all rises a shape, silvery as the flashing of a scymitar, or of water, gigantic, kingly, with a mantled head, and long folds covering his whole form. But he stretches his great moving hands over the palaces and bay, and flakes of pale fire fall from them, and kindle every window and capital of a pillar, and flash from every face, and shoot again upwards, and beam as stars in the dark sky. The mantled genie looks not like any

one of the spirits of the past, but as if they were all combined in him." "Look once more, O Caliph!" "Juggler! there is but a grain of sand."

"Thine eyes are weary of looking, not the visions of displaying themselves. Thou canst see no more this day. But if all this be visible in a grain of sand by the open and fresh eye of man, what sights beyond this thinkest thou that there must be in a man himself? Of these sights, a portion are in every book recorded."

"Slave!" said the Caliph-" tell me not of books, but of hidden treasures, or I will have thee impaled ere an hour is past."

"I have told thee of far more than thou thoughtest. The treasures of the Pharaohs would show thee little of what thou hast seen in that grain of sand. Farewell, O Caliph! I have been ordained but to live till I bad seen and known thee, and then to depart. In that world where the hearts of men shall be more open to each other than their books are here, it will be read in mine that I hold thee ignorant and headstrong, but still a man, and, therefore, capable of good. Farewell! I am but a grain of sand; hide my corpse under those of the desert before me."

The hermit sank on the rocky floor of the cave, at Omar's feet, quite dead.

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