and then three, and then two, several times. At last the two fingers prevailed, and at the conclusion of the address we saw the meaning of this dumb show; for each soldier present had to hold up his thumb and two fingers in a certain position, and repeat after the officer the oath of allegiance to William of Prussia, Emperor of Germany.

Strange, indeed, it seemed to see these young recruits, conscripts probably from the conquered provinces, torn perhaps unwillingly-from their homes, taking oath in their old Catholic cathedral, with all the solemn ceremonies of their religion, to serve unto death the champion of Protestantism, the conqueror of their former master, and the destroyer of the city wherein they stood. Yet they seemed apparently indifferent, and took the oath without reluctance; although some, either from awkwardness or of malice prepense, did not hold up their hand properly until made to do so by the officer who administered the oath. Awkward, stolid-looking fellows they were certainly, and some of them very young; but a year's drill under their new masters will give them a very different aspect, and they will wear the spiked helmet, and carry the needlegun gallantly, and perhaps do much towards reconciling the districts from which they come to the rule of him who is certainly the idol of the soldiers, and justly so, being himself every inch a soldier. A strange example of the perversity of human nature is the suddenly-conceived aversion of the German inhabitants of Alsace to the rule of their German conquerors. I suppose in no case can it be pleasant to be conquered, either by friend or by foe; the feelings of the vanquished will ever be bitter for a time: but it seems sheer perversity when this bitterness causes people to change the language which they have spoken from childhood for an unfamiliar tongue; yet this is certainly the case in Strasburg. When I was there five years ago, the majority of the people spoke German, and, moreover, looked upon you with a sort of pitying contempt if you ventured to address them in French; but, strange to say, German guns have had the effect of converting a German-speaking people into ardent Frenchmen, so that now French is the language of the people, and German that of the officials; which is rather puzzling to strangers, being the exact reverse of former experience. Undoubtedly, at present, the Strasburghers are so sore at having been conquered, that they disdain law and order and prosperity, and eagerly desire to return to the dominion of France, under whatever government that unhappy country may groan, whether Thiers, Gambetta, Napoleon, or Henri Cinq be ruler for the nonce; but ere that can be, the right hand of Bismarck must have lost its cunning, and the grand old German emperor must lie sleeping with Barbarossa, watching with him even from his grave over the destinies of Fatherland.

War may indeed arise again, and probably will do so: but I am pleased to find that even the most sanguine of Frenchmen allow that ten years must elapse before they can be ready to meet the foe; and that time will, I trust, do much towards healing old sores. There is great naïveté in the way in which the French speak of the war to come.

"Had they been content with money," said a young Frenchman to me, 66 we might have borne it; but to take provinces, what infamy!"

"But," I suggested, "would you not have taken the Rhine provinces had you been victorious?"

"Mais oui, certainement; et autant plus que possible mais!" With an expressive shrug of the shoulders, which meant decidedly that what is sauce for the goose is certainly not sauce for the gander, in their estimation.

Nevertheless, with the best will in the world, they will require to become strong and united, like the many-headed, many-handed giants of our childhood, before they can again dare to cope with united Germany, with even the faintest chance of winning back, in fair fight, the conquered provinces; for they are not at all likely ever to catch Bismarck asleep.

A grand nation, certainly, is the German; brave in war and modest in success. Ön the anniversary of Sedan, I was in the romantically-situated village of Partenkirchen, in the Bavarian Highlands. No ringing of bells or firing

of cannon distinguished the day; flags flying from houses and churches alone told of festivity. As we sat at supper in the little country inn, we heard a few "hochs!" from an adjoining room in which the peasantry were enjoying themselves, whereupon a Bavarian general and another gentleman belonging to the Government left the room, and probably gave the soldiers money, for the "hochs!" increased. On their return, one of the gentlemen remarked to me, half-apologetically, but with a certain pardonable pride, that it was the anniversary of Sedan; and the gentlemen present all rose, clinked their glasses, and drank a toast to the memory of that great day; and this was all the exultation I witnessed at such unparalleled success. A little later I had the pleasure of seeing the great German conqueror at Baden-Baden, as he sat between his son, the valiant Prince Imperial, and his daughter, the Duchess of Baden, in the simple Lutheran church, listening to the discourse of the black-robed preacher with deep attention. But for the ubiquitous photographs, what stranger could have believed that in the two fine-looking private gentlemen, without even a star or a ribbon to denote their rank, he yet beheld the two men who made France tremble. Truly, the best guard of a monarch is the love of his subjects, a sentiment fully believed in by the Emperor William and many other German princes, and which enables them to go about among their people like private citizens, almost unattended, and frequently unrecognized; thus, on the occasion of which I write, the Crown Prince and Grand Duke and Duchess arrived first at the church, quite unnoticed; and some time afterwards the emperor drove up, in a little open carriage, with only one attendant (Count Eulenberg, I believe), and was received at the church-door by one gentleman only. There was no curious crowd to await his arrival, in fact, we were the only individuals looking on, the congregation, apparently, gave no heed to the presence of these august personages. I saw no inattention to the service, no whisperings, no curious glances directed to the royal pew; all was quiet, orderly, and decorous; the alms-bag was handed to the emperor as well as to the rest of the congregation; but at the conclusion of the service, although there was no pushing and rushing, as in England, to get a glimpse of the imperial party, yet all the congregation formed in an orderly line at the door, and every hat was raised with no simulated reverence as they passed.

The empress always attends the English church; and there one gentleman only is deputed to receive her at the door, and conduct her to her seat.

This absence of pomp and ceremony must be a great boon to royalty in Germany, and, moreover, causes the people to look upon their sovereign as a fellow-citizen, as well as visible head of the State, rather than as a dressed-up puppet, only to be admired as a rare-show upon grand occasions, and is, perhaps, the cause of that affectionate loyalty which characterises the mass of the German people. Scarcely can you enter an inn, or even a private house in Germany, without finding the portraits of the king, queen, and heir to the throne occupying the place of honor, and frequently adorned with a wreath of flowers; and, since the war, the emperor has been almost universally added at the head of the royal group, a proof that princes are not looked upon as tyrants, at any rate.

But to return to Strasburg. The Germans have a profound veneration for the maxim, "Early to bed and early to rise," which, however, a man may follow all his life, and never receive the reward promised, of health, wealth, and wisdom; and the Germans, although possessing a full share of the last-named, have not hitherto been famed for wealth, and scarcely for health, if we may judge from the number of baths, waters, and cures of all kinds, in vogue amongst them; meanwhile, the practice is a great nuisance to weary travellers arriving late at their destination, who find the hotels half shut and the waiters all too sleepy to attend to their wants; whilst at daybreak, or before, there arises such a ringing of bells, such a hammering and clattering, that it is impossible to make up for loss of sleep overnight by an extra snooze in the morning.

Our rest at Strasburg was broken not only by the aforenamed noises, but by loud military music approaching rapidly. Rushing to the windows, we saw passing beneath us six or seven regimental bands, followed by a small body of infantry, the whole in such excellent order, so trim and bright and clean, not a foot out of step, not a bayonet awry, they might have been going to a review before the emperor and Von Moltke, instead of to their ordinary daily drill or guard. I could not help contrasting this display with one I witnessed in the same city five years before, when I stood to see a French regiment march past. The pioneers in front were magnificent fellows, with their great bearskin shakos, and their axes over their shoulders; the band, too, was good, and discoursed excellent music; but when it came to the men, what a falling off was there! Some were mere lads, and all were untidy-looking; many slouched dreadfully, some walked, others ran, and the bayonets were all at sixes and sevens; yet many of these men wore the cross of the Legion of Honor and our own Crimean medal, and were doubtless valiant soldiers; but given two opposing forces, equal in valor, victory will surely incline towards the most highly disciplined; as was proved over and over again during the late war, and which certainly is not likely to be soon forgotten in Strasburg, where the ruins of the streets and the untouched cathedral testify to the perfection of the German artillery, and the precision to be attained by practice under discipline.

The children now playing among the ruins, in happy forgetfulness of the misery they endured only a short year ago, will, in their old age, when memory reverts with faithful minuteness to the scenes of childhood, have many a tale to tell to their grandchildren of that dreadful time when they were shut up in cellars for safety, and could not even run across the street because of the fiery hail which battered down all the houses of the city; when they were obliged to catch the rats and mice for food, or kill the dainty-livered goose unfatted, or the pet dog or cat, or horse, or donkey, to satisfy hunger, and saw their neighbors starving or dying of disease, or being killed by the rain of shot and shell; of the many miraculous escapes they themselves had from death, and from injury by fire and sword, and falling houses, and, worst of all, from death by hunger; of the delightful calm which succeeded the booming of those terrible guns; of the childish curiosity which led them to peep from windows, or round the corners of the streets, at those dreaded enemies who had wrought all this destruction, feeling for them mingled hate, fear, and admiration, and finding them in reality not half so wicked as they expected; accepting at last from their hands the offered morsel of bread, and devouring it greedily, half ashamed the while. All this they will have to tell, and much more; but God grant that this may be the only tale of war the Strasburghers may have to recount to coming generations.

THERE are two ways of looking at the apparent incompleteness of life, -twenty or twenty thousand, no doubt; but for our present purpose, certainly two.

The first says,

all is vanity; the second, all is promise. These different views are rooted in differences of temperament or faculty. Where lofty idealism and strong conscience are united in the same person, the tendency will be to say all is promise. Instances in point are Milton and Shelley. Where one or the other is deficient, or both, and yet the necessary speculative conditions are present, the mind will gravitate towards the decision that all is vanity. Instances in point are Byron and Quarles.

I have, for ends familiar enough to thoughtful persons, selected on each side examples in which there are wide differences apart from my specific purpose; but, that purpose being borne in mind, the necessary explanation may be thus stated. Milton and Shelley differ in much. For instance, in Milton there is veneration or regard for au

thority as such; in Shelley there is no reverence for authority except so far as it can justify itself. But in both, there is the most intense ideality and the most exigent conscientiousness. There would in both be a mighty feeling that the idealism was, by the constitution of things, under a necessity of making good its own reason of existence; and thus what was beautiful and great in life would, for each, look into his soul with eyes of immortal promise. The form of the promise would, of course, be varied by intellectual conditions; but it would be there. Now, take Quarles and Byron. Here, again, the intellectual conditions would, of course, be operative in the total result; but look at the points in which the two men agree and differ. In Byron the ideality was intense, but the conscientiousness was deficient. In Quarles there was much more conscientiousness, but only a good, not by any means an intense, ideality. In each case the ideality would, to use a most expressive French idiom, have no proper logique; and the "last word" of life, so to speak, would be, all is vanity. The intellectual and other conditions being what they were, Byron would, for example, say that love was a "cheat" (I have in my mind a passage in "Cain," which is unquotable here), and there he would end. Quarles would also say that love was a cheat, for his sense of the vitality and force of beautiful things would not be strong enough to urge him to feel otherwise; but then his conscientiousness, stronger than Byron's, demanding a logique of some kind for the history of what he believed to be an "immortal soul," he would turn elsewhere for what the beauty of life seemed to deny to him.

Now, no sceptical conclusion must be drawn from the fact that so large and important a variation may be determined mainly by inevitable differences of mental constitution; for the question would still remain, Which of the two views, estimated in the minds of the most fully-endowed persons, covers the greatest number of facts? or, still better and more accurately, Which of them does, or does not, contain some element that is irreconcilable with postulates upon which all minds alike do, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, insist? Thus, it is no argument against an immortality of promise in love that Byron did not feel it, or that Quarles, or any other Puritan, fancying that something must be immortal, but that love was a poor sort of thing, felt the promise in another shape. These divergencies might even help us in considering the question, "in the abstract; " but that is what we are not now about to do: what follows will be simply critical, or, at the utmost, suggestive.

One of the most delightful books I have read for a long time is "Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khédive," by the Rev. F. Barham Zincke, vicar of Wherstead, and chaplain in ordinary to the queen; but with the general contents of this very felicitous volume of travel, we are not now concerned. A single point of deep interest will give us quite work enough. After having traced Oriental polygamy to its inevitable source (I should myself say one of its sources, and should find plenty to criticise in this part of the work) in the very early decay—the French word flétrissure is better-of the women, he passes on to what he, in his familiar, chatty way, calls Houriism, the peculiar institution which is to be the means of rewarding the faithful in the paradise of Mohammed. He does not refer to the story of Ibrahim in one of Montesquieu's "Lettres Persanes," or enter at all into the question of compensation; but he introduces the Christian heaven in the following remarks: "In the Christian heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Of this everybody approves: at all events, one never met or heard of a Christian who wished it otherwise." As Mr. Zincke is committed to what he calls the "historical method of interpreting" the sacred books of Christians, there is no certain way of telling how he would deal with either the authority or the bearing of the well-known passage in the New Testament; but, for all that appears, he assumes its absolute authority in the ordinary sense. I wish it to be distinctly understood, that I do not state or imply any opinion of my own whatever as to its authority in any

sense, or its interpretation. But that "one never meets or hears of Christians who wish" the facts "otherwise than the ordinary reception of the passage implies is, I think, the most startling statement I ever met in the whole course of my reading.

very

Here, indeed, I must be personal. I was brought up "in the most straightest sect of our religion;" have always been familiar with the religious literature and society of that sect; and have, at this moment, ample means,-which I have used,—of interrogating the facts as to the opinions and feelings of the majority of avowedly Christian people. The first thing, then, I have to remark is, that some of my very earliest and most powerful recollections are of discussions between my parents and among their relations and friends this upon dictum attributed to the Founder of Christianity. Perhaps Mr. Barham Zincke has some idea of the place the "sin unto death" occupies in the "thoughts and discussions" of Puritan people. He, perhaps, read of the funeral of Mr. "Wheelbarrow" Wells, pastor of an immense strict Baptist church near the "Elephant and Castle," -a funeral at which there were ninety mourning coaches. Now, among the kind of people who sat under Wheelbarrow Wells, the sin unto death would be a perpetual topic of anxious criticism and investigation, as it was among those Christians among whom I was born and nurtured. Next to that topic in my early recollections, that of the fate of the marriage relation in heaven stands prominent. Many scores, many hundreds of times, must I have heard the words, In heaven they "neither marry nor are given in marriage," talked over, wept over, prayed over, made the subject of eager "wrestling with the Lord in prayer." The cases in which ministers were consulted about it, chiefly by wives, as was natural, were far too numerous for me to remember in detail; but I have had to sit out and to read a great many sermons, in which every conceivable trick of the commentator was resorted to for the purpose of blunting the edge of the dreaded words. To my own mother they were a sore trial. I remember walking long miles with her one June day, through the yellow broom and wildbrier roses (that heather ground is now a mass of houses), to consult the minister about those very words. If the conjugal relation was extinguished in heaven, the parental and filial relations would be extinguished too; and not to meet her children and her father in heaven, as her children and her father, was more than my mother could bear to contemplate.

So far, what is personal. Before we pass on to the testimony of poets and others upon the trouble the words in question have given, let us just notice a point of construction which arises at starting. Mr. Zincke might say (he does not say, and I should not think it logical if he did) that the passage, for his purpose, may mean that no fresh conjugal relation will ever be entered upon in the life to come. But, first, the words, as they stand, the only shape in which it can be true that Christians either do or do not complain of them,- relate explicitly to the recognition or resumption of past connections. Everybody knows that the question said to have been thus put and thus answered referred to a woman who was supposed to have married seven brothers. And, secondly, the human heart, the Christian human heart, has rebelled against the words considered as making fresh ties of love between man and woman impossible in a future life. Thousands of baffled or vaguely-yearning hearts have reached forward to the life beyond the grave, to grasp in thought a love unrealized here. Mr. Zincke has heard of Mr. George MacDonald. Now, I distinctly remember in his "Guild Court" a very beautiful passage, in which he says, speaking with authority as a seer and prophet, that those in whom, to use the old English phraseology, the life of humanity has not been perfected or completed, shall have that life completed in the world to come. The language is something like this: "for God will take care that his youths and maidens shall yet become men and women." And a paragraph in Canon Kingsley's Yeast," applying to Honoria Lavington, beloved of Paul Tregarva (her father's gamekeeper), is to the same key-note. How much to the same purpose there is in Swedenborg I do not know

-

--

Now, this last quotation is strictly relevant to the question of the formation of new nuptial ties in the life to come, the question between what is called "the flesh" and what is called "the spirit" we shall come to in few sentences, for on Arthur's side there was in this world no true possession, as, indeed, his own words imply the marriage was still inchoate; and, besides, not all the art of the poet has satisfied the reader that Guinevere, even at the last, loved Arthur, We all know, in our own experience of passion, what are these sudden spasms of revulsion; and we feel that the love born of remorse is not to be depended upon. But we will take one more quotation or two, to suggest how very general has been the rebellion of the human heart, Christianize it as you please, against the doctrine referred to. The full pertinence of the quotations from Mr. Coventry Patmore's "Faithful Forever" cannot be arrived at in the absence of a complete knowledge of the story of the poem on the part of the reader; but enough for my purpose is made clear in the line italicized:

We will now pass on to Milton. In the "Treatises on Divorce," I can remember nothing upon the subject, though it was one which was likely to occur to his mind in writing them; but we have superabundant proof that he believed strictly conjugal happiness possible-and probablein the life to come. His sonnet "On his Deceased Wife" does not go far; but, coupled with other matters, it goes quite far enough. The reader knows that she came to him in a dream, pale and beautiful, like Alcestis,—

"And such as vet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint.”

But we are not left without express information as to what ideas Milton had formed to himself of super-mundane, or infra-mundane loves. We know that when Satan sees Adam and Eve "imparadised in one another's arms,"

There is an old negress in one of Mrs. Stowe's tales ("The Minister's Wooing"?) who says she always knows a thing is sure to happen if she feels it in her bones.

he turns aside with "jealous leer malign." We know that a prominent place among the torments of the rebel angels is assigned to one consequence of their exclusion from the love which is represented as part of the happiness of heaven. And again, one of the topics used by Adam, when he is endeavoring to dissuade Eve from her adventure in the garden, is the Fiend's (probable) envy of their happiness. The most important matter is, however, to come. In the dialogue with Raphael, after Eve has withdrawn, Adam asks "the angel guest familiar" the following question :

"Bear with me then, if lawful what I ask :

Love not the heavenly spirits? And how their love
Express they? by looks only, or do they mix
Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?"

Now, what is the angel's answer? In spite of the necessity, under which criticism places us all, of using words which discriminate between body and soul, two things are certain. First, that in our best moments we have no knowledge of the distinction. Secondly, that no higher imagination, whether of poet or painter, ever entertained the distinction except as one to be "resolved," like a discord, in passing from one passage in music to another. Thirdly, that in music, the most spiritual and least articulate of the arts, the distinction disappears altogether from sight and consciousness. Indeed, it can have no place in the atmosphere of pure art.* Apart from all this, however, we always find the poet goes about, so to speak, to translate the love in which the ordinary conditions of humanity have place into terms or symbols in which those conditions are represented over again perfectly, fact for fact, symbol for symbol. Take an example from "Faithful Forever" -a passage adjoining the one just quoted from that poem:

"All I am sure of heaven is this:

Howe'er the mode, I shall not miss
One true delight which I have known.
Not on the changeful earth alone
Shall loyalty remain unmoved
T'wards everything I ever loved.

So Heaven's voice calls, like Rachel's voice

To Jacob in the field, Rejoice!

Serve on some seven more sordid years,
Too short for weariness or tears;
Serve on; then, O beloved, well-tried,

Take me for ever for thy bride!"

And now let us see how Milton has dealt with this question of translation. In the answer he puts into the angel's lips, he " goes straight at it;" and we discern the very process, in detail, of the superposition of terms:

"To whom the angel, with a smile that glowed Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue,

* That it appears in works of art is quite another matter. Art is one thing, works of art are another. To explain very briefly: As art is concerned alone with beauty, arithmetic is concerned alone with number. Now, arithmetic is used in various sums,-in weighing sugar and iron, and counting nuts, apples, and shillings. But pure arithmetic has nothing to do with these matters. And thus, a work of art may be moral or immoral,- of the body or of the soul; but art, pure and simple, knows none of these things. The word art is constantly used to stand for some imaginary total of all works of art; and then it is said, and quite truly, that art must be either moral or immoral. But the confusion which is constantly made, even by most able and thoughtful writers, between art in this sense and art in the abstract (q. d., physics, or geometry), is a startling, and has always been to me a most irritat ing, example of the slowness of most minds to catch purely abstract meanings. I do hope that some of the earnest writers and thinkers who have spent labor and strength" in this matter will look steadily at the following propositions: A work of art is like every thing human, a complex product, and is liable to be judged as moral or immoral; but art is the same, whether the work be wicked or good, just as arithmetic has the same method for counting stolen shillings as she has for counting earned ones. A similar remark applies to criticism. Every critical writing is, of necessity, a mixed product, in which much besides true criticism will be found; but this proves nothing against a science of criticism. If it did, it would prove too much, and we should have, necessarily, to give up all judgments upon literary work; admitting at once that the Wealth of Nations" may, perhaps, be a poem, and **Lycidas" an essay. See, passim, for its suggestiveness as to the extent to which criticism, even of paintings, can be made absolute, the valuable paper on "Turner and Mulready," in Macmillan's Magazine for April.

Answered, 'Let it suffice thee that thou knowest
Us happy; and without love no happiness.
Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest
(And pure thou wert created), we enjoy
In eminence, and obstacle find none,
Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars;
Easier than air with air, if spirits embrace,
Total they mix, union of pure with pure
Desiring; nor restrained conveyance need,
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.'

Nothing can be more explicit than this; not even what we have in Swedenborg, to whom we will turn next. I cannot lay my hands on my second volume of Mr. White's valuable book; but the following, from the index, will prove that Swedenborg, like many other "Christians" (Dr. Zincke notwithstanding), has grappled with the "dark reply, that now costs love so many a sigh:" "Marriages in Heaven, vol. i. p. 436, vol. ii. p. 354; explanation of the Lord's saying, There are none in the resurrection, 357; No children born in angelic wedlock, 360; Few unions contracted on earth perpetuated in heaven, 360." And in part of what Swedenborg has to say of the angels, and love in heaven, we shall find quite enough for our purpose. My сору of his "Conjugial Love" is also mislaid (or probably it is in the possession of some friend); but it is well known, that, after certain deductions for partial insanity, the most child-like openness of speech, and the manners of his century, Swedenborg's writings about love, marriage, and children are of almost inconceivable beauty and tenderThe following are a few excerpts from Swedenborg's writings on the subject of love in heaven. In reading them, it must be borne in mind, that, in the Swedenborgian theosophy," angels are no more than glorified men and women. The italics are Mr. White's:

ness.

"The loves of heaven are love to the Lord and love to the neighbor, and it is the nature of those loves to communicate delight. Love to the Lord is communicative, because the Lord's love is the love of communicating all that he has to his creatures; and the same love is in each of those who love him, because the Lord is in them. Love to the neighbor is of a similar quality. The whole business of those loves is to diffuse joy.

"The celestial angels, above all the rest, love to be led by the Lord, as little children by their father. They are nearest to the Lord, and live, as it were, in the Lord. They appear simple outwardly, and before the angels of the inferior heavens, as little children, and naked. They also appear like those who are not very wise, although they are the wisest of the heavens.

"From all my experience, which has now continued for many years, I can declare and solemnly affirm, that the angelic form is in every respect human: that angels have faces, eyes, ears, breasts, arms, hands, and feet; that they see, hear, and converse with each other; and, in a word, lack no external attribute of man, except the material body.

"I have seen angels in their own light, which exceeds, by many degrees, the noonday light of earth; and in that light I have observed all parts of their faces more distinctly and clearly than ever I did the faces of men on earth. It has also been granted me to see an angel of the inmost heaven. His countenance was brighter and more resplendent than the faces of the angels of the outer heavens. I examined him closely, and found him a man in all perfection.

.....

"A man is equally a man after death, and a man so perfectly, that he knows no other than that he is still on earth. He sees, hears, and speaks as on earth; he walks, runs, and sits as on earth; he eats and drinks as on earth; he sleeps and wakes as on earth; he enjoys all delights just as on earth: in short, he is a man in general and every particular as on earth; whence it is plain that death is a continuation of life, and a mere transit to another plane of being.

66

Nevertheless, the difference between the life of earth and of heaven is great; for the senses of the angels are far more exquisite than those of men. All that

we have and enjoy, the angels have and enjoy, but in a delicacy and perfection far beyond our gross and sluggish perceptions.

"The angels are forms of love, and their beauty is ineffable: love beams from their countenances, inspires their speech, and vivifies their every action. . . . From every spirit (and indeed from every man) there emanates a sphere, an air, an aura, impregnated with his life, and by which his quality is made sensible. This aroma, this atmosphere, in the case of the angels, is so full of love, that it affects the inmost life of all who draw near them.

"Death, leaving human nature unaffected, leaves sex unaffected. Angels are men and women, with all the passions of men and women; and consequently marriage is the rule of heaven. Marriage in the heavens is the conjunction of two into one mind.

They who have lived in the chaste love of marriage are above all others in the order and form of heaven after death. Their beauty is surpassing, and the vigor of their youth endures forever. The delights of their love are unspeakable, and they increase to eternity; for all the delights and joys of heaven are collected into wedded love. No language can describe the delights of those angels."

To these passages it may be added, in brief, that, according to Swedenborg, love always begins from the woman, though she does not know it.

As far as human ingenuity can go, - and that, of course, extends only to verbal subtleties and hints of inconceivable possibilities in the future, Swedenborg has here gone towards softening down the difficulties of the problem of special conjugal attachments with universal and inexclusive love. He has made every conjugal pair "one angel;" and if we only suppose, in addition, that every soul beloved on earth by more than one other soul is, in some divine manner, multiplied in the life to come, as many times as there are lovers for that soul, the paradise of Swedenborg is complete. Even as it is, his doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is not open to the taunt of Voltaire, conveyed through one of "Les Trois Adorateurs" in "Les Dialogues Philosophiques." He compliments Mohammed on having escaped what he calls an "absurd impertinence ;" and Swedenborg has equally escaped it.

As to my own personal opinion about the dictum (attributed to the Founder of Christianity) from which all this takes its departure, I shall say nothing, absolutely_nothing, and I wish to have that clearly understood. But in reading any reference whatever, in Semitic writings, to the subject of attachment between men and women, we must bear in mind that what we Westerns, especially of the Teutonic race as distinct (pace Mr. Huxley) from the Latin and Celtic races, call love, is a conception nowhere present in those writings. We find in the Bible desire in various qualities and degrees of violence, admiration, the masculine instinct of possession, domestic attachment; and all this, or all these, qualified by the άyúrn of the New Testament, and in the writings of Paul by his own peculiar culture. But nowhere do we find any thing even approaching to love in the modern sense, or that estimate of woman as especially divine, which has been not uncommon in the West; though it may be plausibly affirmed, that, on the whole, the Hebrew ideal (if the word ideal can properly be applied to any thing Semitic) has overlaid the other, even in the West. Let any one who has the opportunity turn to Tieck's story of the Golden Goblet, or the episode of Zieschen in Mr. Maurice's youthful novel of "Eustace Conway." He will there find an ideal of love between man and woman, which, so far from taking a direct path towards possession on either side, seems rather to shun it than otherwise. Mr. Maurice's Englishman is dumbfoundered to find, that while the young German adored Zieschen, and avows that his whole being was spiritually transformed by her, he declares positively that he never wanted and does not now want to marry her. What Mr. Maurice does not add in "Eustace Conway "I will add, to save Gath and Askelon the trouble of saying it. It is quite

true, then, that unless either Zieschen the shepherdess, or her love, quits Arcadia, their love will end like other love: but that ending will be a surprise to the heart; it will consist in being taken captive, not in grasping at any thing on either side. It is the very "moral" of Tieck's tale, that the act of conscious grasping breaks the sacred spell of the love. The angels of God are ascending and descending upon the lover: he loves, and his whole life is worship and

tenderness:

cence.

"All heaven bursts her starry floors,

And strews her lights below."

But he is not content. He goes to a magician, and demands to be shown his beloved in the magic goblet. He is solemnly warned to maintain absolute, unseeking retiThe fair image rises from a tender mist; the golden hair, the white brow, the lovely eyes, the sweet lips, the delicate column of the neck, the divine bosom,- and the lover springs forward to grasp the beautiful phantasm. It is gone. And a rose, for remembrance, is all that remains of it. He is permitted to take the rose, which is a talisman that keeps his soul pure and his heart warm; but he lives and dies lonely.

Does the reader say that I have wandered? Not so far, not so far. I will only add (to recur to our startingpoint) that I am in my own soul sure, not that all is vanity, but that all is promise, and that those portions of human experience which involve the greatest happiness, or possibility of happiness, contain the surest, highest promise of a repetition of the joyful theme. Shall he, this wonder, dead, become mere highway dust?" The poem of the laureate's in which that question occurs is, to my mind, a very poor and conventional one; but that question is one that, wrung from the heart hour by hour, draws down from heaven hour by hour the answer, "No, he shall not die."

"Hélas, l'infini a disparu, et j'avais tant de choses à lui dire." Patience, then; and we shall say them yet.

CHILDISHNESS.

THE defect we would indicate by childishness is a weak place in an ordinarily strong and reasonable mind, not a generally low level of character. Some men are all childish: their feebleness and puerility are themselves. We are surprised when they are any thing else. They may be gifted with an animation and vivacity which impart a certain interest to them, but they never take a manly view of things. If they are good and amiable, their friends treat their innocence as angelic; but it is impossible to look at such characters by the light of common sense without observing a deficiency. They never master the circumstances that surround them. Unless we give them credit for a species of inspiration, their judgment is not valuable : their warmest admirers do not think of them as men. There are others whom nobody thinks angels; who see every thing through their own small likes, dislikes, and prejudices; who get up little fervors, little exasperations, little bustles of business, which perplex those who are without opportunities of close examination, and who therefore miss the true explanation of them. Because they have arrived at man's stature and estate, people don't discern that they have never really emerged from childhood. The exterior may be thirty years of age, but the mind and intellectual habits never get beyond ten. We see a child engaged in man's work. There is a smiling priggishness, an empty earnestness, an unmeaning activity, under their grown-up-ness, which tells this tale. They are, in fact, upset by growth: it would have suited them better to stop a dozen years before. Because they cannot occupy so large a tenement, there is a collapse. Master Slender, who courts Anne Page, is one of these stationary, unlovely children. So are the players of a certain class of practical jokes. They are not our concern now. The childishness which at present attracts our notice is an anomaly, a