"Had men been made so, you would never have been-for what could genius have done or thought? -you would have been a machine like all the rest."

"And better so!" he said, and turned away; for at that moment, watching keenly as he spoke the action of a delicate combination of movements, all made and balanced to a hair's-breadth, there had come to him suddenly the idea of something which made it a hundredfold more strong than terrible. For they were terrible these things that lived yet did not live, which were his slaves, and moved at his will. When he had done this, he looked at me, and a smile came upon his mouth but his eyes smiled not, nor ever changed from the set look they wore. And the words he spoke were familiar words, not his, but out of the old life. "What a piece of work is a man!" he said; "how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty in form and moving how express and admirable! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?" His mind had followed another strain of thought, which to me was bewildering, so that I did not know how to reply. I answered like a child, upon his last word.

"We are dust no more," I cried, for pride was in my heart-pride of him and his wonderful strength, and his thoughts which created strength, and all the marvels he did "those things which hindered are removed. Go on, go on— you want but another step. What is to prevent that you should not shake the universe, and overturn this doom, and break all our bonds? There is enough here to explode this grey fiction of a firmament, and to rend those precipices and to dissolve that waste-as at the time when the primeval seas dried up, and those infernal mountains rose.'

He laughed, and the echoes caught the sound and gave it back as if they mocked it "There is enough to rend us all into shreds," he said, "and shake, as you say, both heaven and earth, and these plains and those hills."

"Then why," I cried in my haste, with a dreadful hope piercing through my soul-"why do you create and perfect, but never employ? When we had armies on the earth we used them. You have more than armies. You have force beyond the thoughts of man: but all without use as yet.

"All," he cried, "for no use!" All in vain!—in vain!"

"O master! I said, "great, and more great, in time to come. Why?-why?"

He took me by the arm and drew me close.

"Have you strength," he said, "to bear it if I tell you why?"

I knew what he was about to say. I felt it in the quivering of my veins, and my heart that bounded as if it would escape from my breast. But I would not quail from what he did not shrink to utter. I could speak no word, but I looked him in the face and waited for that which was more terrible than all.

He held me by the arm, as if he would hold me up when the shock of anguish came. "They are in vain," he said, "in vain-because God rules over all."

His arm was strong; but I fell at his feet like a dead man.

How miserable is that image, and how unfit to use! Death is still and cool and sweet. There is nothing in it that pierces like a sword, that burns like fire, that rends and tears like the turning wheels. O life, O pain, O terrible name of God, in which is all succour and all torment ! What are pangs and tortures to that, which ever in

creases in its awful power, and has no limit, nor any alleviation, but whenever it is spoken penetrates through and through the miserable soul? O God, whom once I called my Father! O Thou who gavest me being, against whom I have fought, whom I fight to the end, shall there never be anything but anguish in the sound of Thy great name?

When I returned to such command of myself as one can have who has been transfixed by that sword of fire, the master stood by me still. He had not fallen like me, but his face was drawn with anguish and sorrow like the face of my friend who had been with me in the lazar-house, who had disappeared on the dark mountains. And as I looked at him, terror seized hold upon me, and a desire to flee and save myself, that I might not be drawn after him by the longing that was in his eyes.

The Master gave me his hand to help me to rise, and it trembled, but not like mine.

"Sir," I cried, "have not we enough to bear? Is it for hatred, is it for vengeance, that you speak that name!"

"O friend," he said, "neither for hatred nor revenge. It is like a fire in my veins: if one could find Him again!

"You, who are as a god-who can make and destroy-you, who could shake His throne?"

He put up his hand. "I who am His creature, even here-and still His child, though I am so far, so far

He caught my hand in his, and pointed with the other trembling. "Look! your eyes are more clear than mine, for they are not anxious like mine, you see anything upon the way?"

Can

The waste lay wild before us, dark with a faintly rising cloud, for darkness and cloud and the gloom of death attended upon that name. I thought, in his great genius and splendour of intellect, he had gone mad, as sometimes may be. "There is nothing," I said, and scorn came into my soul; but even as I spoke I saw I cannot tell what I sawa moving spot of milky whiteness in that dark and miserable wilderness,-no bigger than a man's hand, no bigger than a flower. "There is something," I said unwillingly; it has no shape nor form. It is a gossamer-web upon some bush, or a butterfly blown on the wind."

"There are neither butterflies nor gossamers here."

"Look for yourself then!" I cried, flinging his hand from me. I was angry with a rage which had no cause. I turned from him, though I loved him, with a desire to kill him in my heart; and hurriedly took the other way. The waste was wild: but rather that than to see the man who might have shaken earth and hell thus turning, turning to madness and the awful journey. For I knew what in his heart he thought, and I knew that it was So. It was something from that other sphere-can I tell you what? a child perhaps-oh, thought that wrings the heart! for do you know what manner of thing a child is? There are none in the land of darkness. I turned my back upon the place where that whiteness was. On, on, across the waste! On to the cities of the night! On, far away from maddening thought, from hope that is torment, and from the awful Name!

WHEN Mr Hayward died nearly three years ago, he had been for a long time a remarkable figure in the social life of London. What it was that made him notable did not at first sight appear. He had been bred to the Bar, and had attained to the dignity of Queen's Counsel, but he had for long abandoned the practice of his profession. He wrote reviews in an exceedingly good and popular style, but they were mostly on subjects of a light class, and they were purely and simply reviews, containing nothing which was not founded on the acts or thoughts of others. His conversation, likewise, afforded no evidence of originality; it was not in the least brilliant, and displayed chiefly a remarkable memory and power of quotation, great accuracy in dates and facts, strong opinions strongly expressed, and an impatience of contradiction, or even of dissent, amounting to intolerance, and not unfrequently leading to unpleasant collisions of temper. He was evidently not a rich man -he might even be called a poor one-inhabiting a small set of rooms on the second floor of a house in St James's Street, and sallying thence to dine at his club, the Athenæum. To the great majority of those who might chance to notice his small bent figure traversing Pall Mall with a rapid step, he was absolutely unknown by name. It might be supposed from all this that there was nothing greatly to distinguish him from a number of others who write essays and reviews anonymously in excellent English.

But

to have supposed this would have been a mistake. Though unaided by fortune or fame, he exercised in many respects an influence due only to a commanding intellect in a commanding position. In London and in country-houses he moved in a very elevated stratum of society-in most gatherings of the most fashionable people he was pretty sure to be found. Great ladies talked of him as « Hayward." Eminent persons dining at his club gravitated to the table where, like Cato, he gave his little senate laws. Foreign statesmen, known throughout Europe, were his correspondents, and when they visited London, would seek interviews with him. But his influence appeared most distinctly in a political crisis, when great leaders would send for him, discuss the situation, and employ him in negotiating with statesmen of the class from which ministries are formed. This remarkable difference between the position which his apparent merits might naturally have gained for him and that which he actually enjoyed, formed a curious problem. It is to be accounted for not so much by his intellectual as by his moral characteristics. He was an exceedingly social man, and pushed his way with a hardihood which seemed to defy denial. His fondness for the company of persons of worldly consideration, backed by his strong self-confidence, procured for him a great number of important acquaintances, and these, it must be said, he never sought to propitiate by flattery; in all companies he was still Hayward,