to the conclusions they prescribe, in a way of your own, which is a very bright and happy way,—a deal shorter and pleasanter than that by reasoning, we must at least, for the sake of the stranger here, who so often comes, like a stupid, to interrupt us, be content to hear them.

"What is it, then," says an eminent thinker, "that men love in genius but its infinite hope, which degrades all that it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor; its own idea is never executed. The Iliad, the Hamlet, the Doric column, the Roman arch, the Gothic Minster, the German anthem, when once finished are cast behind him, by the master. How sinks the song in the waves of melody which the universe pours over his soul? Before that gracious Infinite, out of which he drew these few strokes, how mean they seem, though the praises of the world attend them! From the triumphs of his art he turns with desire to this greater defeat. Let those admire who will. The pessimism of Voltaire," continues this author, "is still more contrary to the aggregate of facts than an absolute optimism. Between these two systematic extremities, which facts belie, the human race has placed the hope of another life. From the infractions of the general law of good, it has only concluded that these will be corrected and reduced to order, and that there will be reparation. The moral person who acts well or ill is united to a body; it lives with him, serves him, and depends on him, but it is not him. A belief in the spirituality of the soul is involved in the belief in the identity of the me, which no common reasonable being has ever yet called in doubt. So there is not the least hypothesis when one affirms that the soul differs essentially from the body; and when we say the soul, we mean to say the person which is not separated from the consciousness of the attributes which constitute it,—namely, thought and will. Every thing has its end or object to achieve. This principle is as absolute as that which refers every event to a cause. Man, then, has an end and an object in creation. This end is revealed in all his thoughts, actions, sentiments,—in all his life. Whatever he does, whatever he feels, whatever he thinks, he thinks of the infinite, he loves the infinite, he tends to the infinite. This need of the infinite is the great spring of scientific curiosity,-the principle of all discoveries. Love has no cessation or rest but there. On

the way it may experience lively enjoyments; but the secret bitterness which is mixed with them soon makes its votary feel the insufficiency and the void. Often in ignorance of his true object, with desires infinite but hopes impossible, man demands the cause of this fatal disenchantment which attains succes

sively all his success and all his happiness. "I had no longer a project for the future," says a great author, "which could amuse my imagination; it was not even possible for me to have one, since the situation in which I was placed was precisely that in which all my desires were reunited; I had no others to form, and lo! I had still my heart empty." "If man could read in himself," observes a great French writer, "he would recognize, that if nothing here below satisfies him, it is because his object is more elevated, and that the true term to which he aspires is infinite perfection. As thought and love are boundless, so human activity is without limits. Who can say where it will stop? This earth is nearly known. We shall soon want another world. Man is on the march to infinity. He conceives it; he feels it; he carries it, as it were, in himself. How could his end be elsewhere? Hence this indomitable instinct of immortality—this universal hope of another life attested by all religions, all poetry, all traditions. We tend to the infinite with all our powers. Death interrupts this destiny which seeks its term; it surprises it unfinished. It is, then, probable that there is something after death,-since at our death nothing in us is terminated. Look at this flower, which will not exist to-morrow. To-day it is wholly developed. One cannot conceive it more beautiful in its kind than it is now; it has attained its perfection; but my moral perfection and happiness, of which I have so clear an idea, and so invincible a want-for which I feel myself born-in vain I labour for it; it escapes me, and leaves me only hope. Will this hope be deceived? All beings attain their end. Is man alone not to obtain his? The greatest of creatures would be the worse treated. But not only that; a being that would remain incomplete and unfinished, who would not attain the end which all his instincts proclaim, would be a monster in the eternal order,—a much harder problem to solve than the difficulties against believing the immortality of the soul present. This tendency of all our desires, and of all the powers of the soul towards infinity, en

lightened by the principle of final causes, is a serious confirmation of the moral and metaphysical proof." So far this philosopher, whose words may convince us that there is a consent existing between the highest intelligences and common minds like our own, in admitting the principles from which all the minute results of the most positive religion take their origin. The considerations suggested by this common thought of ours, then, is excellent, if we are to credit any one the best entitled to qualify it.

The prospect of a future life cannot, therefore, be monopolized by any class of human beings; since every common man and woman has an equal interest in attending to it,though unquestionably the thoughts evolved may be modified, and in some measure moulded, by circumstances of position. Pindar seems to confine such forethought to the few, saying,

"The wise, content not with life's present store,

To the fair breeze that shall hereafter blow,
Like prudent seamen look *."

But since, as he himself says in the next line,

"The rich, the poor, alike to death's dark tomb must go,"

the thought of what concerns us beyond it, belongs, more or less, to all men naturally, "strong to believe whate'er of mystic good the Eternal dooms for his immortal children." We must all think on God as water must reflect the sky. Minds will meet on this theme, though in silence, like forbidden lovers. You must not, therefore, be surprised, stranger, on finding started in such a place, and by such persons, who you like a silly one thought could listen to nothing but talk about such matters as fancy balls or new novels, this subject of religion, so sad and tasteless for many, through being misled as to its real character, so sweet for these less misdirected as to its exigencies, and who, combining it with love and all the delicious humanities of life, make of it the final object of their consolation and their hope.

* Nem. vii.

"Oh, let the soul her slumbers break;
Let thought be quickened and awake;
Awake to see

How soon this life is past and gone,
And death comes softly stealing on,
How silently!

Let no one fondly dream again

That Hope and all her shadowy train
Will not decay;

Fleeting as were the dreams of old,

Remember'd like a tale that's told,
They pass away."

So sung Coplas de Manrique, as translated by Longfellow, but so at times sings every one to his own heart. Therefore, religion is a common thought,—and in some form or other, perhaps, what the word expresses is among the commonest of all things in the world,-since no age or country, or perhaps even at some period or other of his life, no individual has ever been wholly without it. For Lovers, perhaps above all, as a poet says, "there is much to think and feel of things beyond this earth, which lie, as we deem, upwards." Sir Fulk Grevill, Lord Brooke, says in his curious poem,

"Religion thus we naturally profess;

Knowledge of God is likewise universal!
Which divers nations diversely express

For truth, pow'r, goodness,-
-men do worship all;
Duties to Parent, Child, Time, Men, and Place,
All known by Nature, but observ'd by Grace."

"Religion," says a great author, "was an earlier bond and a deeper foundation of society than government; it is an element, a principle of human nature. The human race as it advances does not leave religion behind it, as it leaves the shelter of caves and forests; does not outgrow faith; does not see it fading, like the mist, before its rising intelligence. The worship of God cannot be banished from the earth. All other wants of man are superficial. The profoundest of all is the want of God. The religious is the deepest and most ineradicable of all principles. In its perversion, indeed, it has been fruitful of crime and woe; but the very energy which it has

VOL. II.

R

given to the passions teaches us the omnipotence with which it is imbued." A general belief in Christianity assumed, and then as common as nature itself is the precept at the beginning of the old treatise entitled the Fleta, which says, "Vivez sagement solone Dieu et solonc le sècle. Qant à Dieu, pensez sovent de la mort que Jésus-Christ suffrit pur vous: qant al sècle pensez de la rae de fortune et ne mie à plus haut que vous ne poez despendre." No female heart at least exists without the seeds of religion-without a secret holy awe for holy things -not alone those which men call holy,

"But such as are revealed to the eyes

Of a true woman's soul bent down and lowly
Before the face of daily mysteries *."

One may often remark too with admiration how universally and instinctively the religious motive is understood by persons of all characters and of all classes. Let a young man ascribe his conduct, on any occasion when it appears singular in the eyes of another, to some idea or humour of his own,—to some poetical fancy, or wise desire of interest, health, or respectability,-to some prudential motive, or to some peculiar suggestion of his own temper at the time, and ten to one but he will be obliged to retract before the force of ridicule or displeasure that will be excited by his confession; but if he give the slightest intimation that he has a religious scruple, that he acts in conformity with his religion, and then, when common persons with common minds were the scoffers, there is an end of the matter at once. His tormentor, in almost every instance, will become, like you, little wanton, his monitor, and even from that moment leave it out of his power to act otherwise than as he had at first proposed. The reason is, that chatter who will, religion is like the brook that chatters longest, and often loudest, as it sings of itself, in the words of our laureate,