in the knowledge that all things lovely hasten to decay, that the lustre fades from beauty's eyes, the lily from her cheek, that the hand we clasp grows throbless in the clasping; that no two lovers can wed and no two friends weave their bond of amity on other condition than this, that at no distant day one shall weep over the grave of the other; in the knowledge, I say, of all this there is, to my thinking, a certain unspeakable sadness for which the most confident hope of immortality is powerless wholly to atone. Who has not felt that the death of a friend is a sorrow not to be surmounted by faith the most fervid and unclouded? Who does not know that the loss of a child is an arrow in the heart, which the parent takes down to the grave ? We are born into shadow as well as sunshine, and, though not mourning as those without hope, we must still Never since the Mosaic era has there been any such creature on earth as an old man or an old woman. Eagles, ravens, and oak trees attain antiquity; but human beings never. We have not time to grow old. We do not live long enough. "To look around us and to die," as Alexander Pope expresses it, is our utmost achievement. "What shadows we are! What shadows we pursue!" exclaimed Edmund Burke. "Ave et Vale!" is our covenant of life. Dwelling on these sad fancies one autumn evening at the sea-side, as I bethought me of an immedicable sorrow, thus spake my melancholy muse in her own rude, untutored strain : mourn. Hail and Farewell! Such is the fleet condition Of earthly intercourse; we meet to part. Joy perisheth in rapture of fruition. . Alas, my heart! The flowers we gather wither in the grasping; Hail and Farewell! The smile of welcome beameth In hope exultant, Youth but little dreameth Of hope's eclipse. Nor cares to think that Time, who looks so radiant, Is disenchanting Fancy's magic spell, To dust dissolving all her fairy pageant. Hail! and Farewell! Hail! and Farewell! 'Tis thus each short-lived pleasure Mid the delights that we most keenly covet, Hail! and Farewell! Let us cull comfort from the knowledge that we are in better Hands than our own, and that as the rains of heaven beautify and fertilize the earth, as the clouds give grandeur to the firmament and splendor to the sunset, as the storm invigorates the trees and the thunder purifies the air, even so does sorrow adorn, exalt, and refine the human heart. I remember to have met somewhere—whether in conversation or in reading I cannot say-this charming thought, that as the leaves are gently detached from the trees by the abundant rains of autumn, so are our hearts insensibly sundered from this fleeting world by the soft pressure of recorded sorrows. Not in identity of worldly interests, as the selfish tell us, nor yet in the conviviality of the festive board, con sists, as the sons of pleasure would have us believe, the true league of brotherhood among men. It dwells, believe me, in community of suffering-in a common liability to grief. That man will be at no great pains to help a friend in adversity who has never felt adversity himself. The heart of such a man is barren and arid as the sands beneath the scorching suns of the equator. Familiarity with the shadows of life is essential to sympathy. In him who has drunk deeply of this cup of anguish, and in him alone, will you find a brother in the hour of danger and distress; for of this rest confidently assured, that all the world over there is a bond of sorrow as of blood, and that they who mourn are everywhere akin. THE DECAY OF THE PICTURESQUE. THE decay of the picturesque is such a sign of the times as the most stoical of philosophers still retaining one touch of poetic sentiment can hardly contemplate without a sigh. It is, I suppose, quite right and proper, and in strict accordance with the eternal fitness of things, that the ornamental shall give way to the practical, and that the graceful and the beautiful shall go down before the advancing tide of commercial innovation; yet these changes, all inevitable though they be, leave the world less lovely, and, in a certain sense, less enjoyable than they found it. In these "costermongering days" the "dulce" counts for little; the "utile " 66 alone is regarded. To money-considerations all other arguments are subordinated; and whatsoever things. are comely and of good repute are so esteemed in the precise proportion that they may be turned to pecuniary advantage. There be men who could find it in their conscience to utilize the Apollo Belvidere into a tailor's dummy, and to boil potatoes in the Portland Vase. Mr. Batty's niggers are doubtless grinning and gloating over their pickles upon the summit of the Dolomites. Mr. Mechi's knives haunt you, "the handles towards your hand," like Macbeth's dagger, in the holy places of Palestine; and you visit the Pyramids only to be told that if you want to have your furniture removed, Mr. Taylor, of Pimlico, is the man for the job. Omnia Romæ cum pretio. The poet and the prophet are the same; and when Hamlet speculated upon the grim contingency that even as he was speaking the dust of Cæsar might peradventure be patching a wall to expel the winter's flaw, he did but foreshadow the day when the Midland Railway Company would convert a churchyard, rich in historic memories, into a luggage station. A few years ago a ship in full sail was no unfrequent spectacle, and the sun rarely shone on a fines. It was, in fact, according to the old proverb, the third loveliest sight in the world, the other two being a girl in the first bloom of her beauty, and a field of golden corn waving in the wind. Its lithe, symmetrical structure; its ingenious complications of lines and draperies, its subtle play of light and shadows, and the stately, swan-like grace of its movements, as it walked the waters like a thing of life, all combined to give to a sailing ship a majestic charm which gladdened the eye and delighted the fancy of any spectator not insensible to the enchantments of form, color, and motion. I never saw such a ship that I did not break off my ordinary discourse and exclaim in the language of Milton-to the no small bewilderment of the bystanders "But who is this? What thing of sea or land? Ornate and gay, comes this way sailing, Like a stately ship of Tarsus bound for th' isles Sails filled and streamers waving, Courted by all the winds that hold them play!" Compare with that superb picture a modern steamboat, panting and groaning like some asthmatic monster, tearing the crystal waves with its vile paws of paddles, flinging its unwieldy hulk "anyhow" upon the tide, and polluting the azure sky and the silver sea with volumes of abominable smoke disgorged from its filthy funnel. The change, regarded from an æsthetic point of view, is not for the better. In the good old days of the wooden walls of England, maritime warfare, and commerce as well, had their poetic aspects; but those aspects have vanished, or survive only upon the walls of the Painted Hall in Greenwich Hospital. Nor is the decay of the picturesque in all that relates to locomotion less remarkable on land than on sea. What with the gaily-colored and sprucely-appointed vehicle itself, with its polished doors and emblazoned panels, the team of spanking roadsters, swift of foot and glossy of hide, champing their bits and tossing their heads daintily in the air, as though they were vain of their effulgent harness, the coachman and the guard both in crimson, the one weilding his whip in gallant style, the other making |