In the second generation, his grand-daughters Rachel Martin of the elder branch and Marie Priaulx of the younger, contended at law for the inheritance after some intestacy: and a terrible lawsuit raged in Chancery for 150 years, between the Tuppers and the Benyons,—and was carried even to the House of Lords, being finally decided in my memory for the Benyons. I remember my uncle saying he would not take thirty thousand pounds for his individual chance,—but my less sanguine father cared not to join in the lawsuit,—saying he would not "throw good money after bad." For my own judgment, and I can speak as an old conveyancing barrister (though without business or experience) of nearly fifty years' standing, our side as the elder had the best right, though the two sisters might well and wisely have shared in a compromise. But somehow it came to be decided that the younger claimant of that vast property must have all,—and the elder be strangely left out in the cold. After the conclusion of the Lords, further litigation was hopeless: so those whom I now represent (as almost the "last of the Abruzzi") must acquiesce in getting nothing, while the opponent side has the good luck to possess, as Dr. Johnson has it, "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." Such is life,—and law: the most obstinate and the richest win: the less pertinacious and the poorer are allowed to fail: it is a process of Darwin's survival of the fittest. All this is now "too late to mend:" but I do hope that if ever I go to Engelfield Castle, Sir Richard will be kindly and genial to his far-off cousin, who (but for some legal quibble unknown) might have dispossessed him.

My father numbered among his patients the Duke of Rutland, and I have heard him say that they half-humorously called each other cousins.

A Lost Chance in Belgravia.

In this connection of possible good luck that never happened, let me record this.

Another of my father's patients was the long deceased Earl Grosvenor, grandfather of the present Duke of Westminster; and about him I have a tale to tell, which shows how nearly we might have been possessed of another vast property—but we missed it. One day in my boyhood, I remember my father coming home after his round and telling my mother that he had a great mind to buy "the five fields" of Lord Grosvenor's, because he thought London might extend that way. Those five fields are now covered with the palatial streets of Belgravia,—but were then a dismal marshy flat intersected by black ditches, and notorious for highway robbery, as a district dimly lit with an oil lamp here and there, and protected by nothing but the useless old watchman in his box: it is the tract of land between Grosvenor Place and Sloane Street. His lordship had a reputation for parsimony, and he fancied it a bargain if he could sell to my father those squalid fields for L2000,—so he offered them to him at that price. When my mother heard of this, she was dead against so extravagant an outlay for that desolate region; so much dreaded by her whenever her aunt's black horses in the old family coach ploughed their way through the slush (MacAdam had not then arisen to give us granite roads) to call on an ancient relative, Mr. Hall, who possessed a priceless cupboard of old Chelsea china, and lived near the hospital. A tradition existed that the said family waggon had once been "stopped" thereabouts by some vizored knight of the road, and this memory confirmed my mother's disapproval of the purchase. So my father was dissuaded, and declined the Earl's offer. I don't suppose that if he had accepted it the property would long have been his, but must have changed hands directly he had doubled his investment: otherwise, imagine what a bargain was there!—However, nobody can foresee anything beyond an inch or a minute, and so this other chance of "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice" long ago faded away.



CHAPTER XLVII.

FLYING.

A lecture which I gave at the Royal Aquarium on September 28, 1883, on the Art of Human Flight, attracted at the time a good deal of newspaper notice; my friend Colonel Fred. Burnaby being in the chair, supported by several other aeronautical notables. From a rough copy by me I have thought fit to preserve the exordium here, just as spoken.

* * * * *

"'Tis sixty years since,"—as the title-page to Waverley has it,—'tis sixty years since a little Charterhouse schoolboy of thirteen called on one Saturday afternoon (his half-holiday) at a shabby office up a court in Fleet Street, with a few saved-up shillings of pocket-money in his hand. His object was secretly to bribe a balloon agent to give him a seat in the basket on the next flight from Vauxhall: however as, either from prudential humanity or commercial greed, the clerk stated that five pounds was the fixed price for a place, and as the aforesaid little gentleman could only produce ten shillings, the negotiation came to nothing,—and I, who had coveted from my cradle the privilege that a bird enjoys from his nest, was fortunately refused that juvenile voyage in the clouds: whereof when I told my excellent mother, her tearful joy that I had not made the perilous ascent affectionately consoled my disappointment.

So it is that, as often happens throughout life, and I am a living proof of it, our Failures prove to be the best Successes: for certainly if my boyish whim had been granted, and I had thereafter taken habitually to such aeronautical flights, at once perilous and unsettling, that young Carthusian would scarcely have stood before you this day as an ancient Proverbial Philosopher.

However, let that pass: I only acted—as oftentimes I since have longed to act—on the desire we all feel to have "the wings of a dove, and fly away and be at rest,"—floating afar from the dross and dust of earth into the blue expanse of the heavenly ether:—a thing yet to be accomplished!—or I will confess to be no prophet: in these days of electricity, concentrated and accumulative after the fashion of M. Faure, aided perhaps by some lighter gas, some condensed form of tamed dynamite,—these elevating and motive powers being helped by exquisite mechanism either as attached to the human form (if the flier be an athlete) or quickening a vehicle with flapping wings impelled by electricity, in which he might sit (if said flier is as burdened with "too solid flesh" as some of us)—these mixed potencies, I say, of electricity and gas, ought at this time of the day to be so manipulated by our chemists and mechanicians as to issue—very soon too—in the grand invention than would supersede every other sort of locomotion,—human flight.

I once met at Baltimore, and since elsewhere, a clever young American mathematician and engineer, Henry Middleton by name, who showed me, at his father's place in South Carolina, parts of a model energised by the motive-powers of gas and electricity, which he hoped would successfully solve the problem of flying; but the Patent Office at Washington was burnt down soon after, and in it I fear was his machine. At all events I have heard nothing of his project since.

I may mention, too, that I believe I have among my audience this evening Mr. De Lisle Hay, the author not only of that recent very graphic book "Brighter Britain," but also of another, more cognate to our present topic, entitled "Three Hundred Years Hence," now out of print, though published only three years ago. In this latter work he has a chapter on "Our Conquest of the Air," and imagines a lighter gas called by him "lucegene," as also a bird-like human flight very much as I had conceived it forty-one years ago. He tells me also that the best vehicle for flying might be an imitation of the sidelong action of a flat fish in water; but how far he has worked upon this idea I know not. Possibly, if in the room, he may tell us after I release you.

It is most worthy of notice, that in the almost solitary Biblical instance of winged angels (see Isaiah vi. 2, and a corresponding passage in Ezekiel—all other angelic ministers being represented as etherealised men) these are somewhat like birds in outline, though having more wings,—with twain covering the head so as to cleave the air, with twain to cover the feet so as to be a sort of tail or rudder, while with twain they did fly: even as Blake, and Raffaelle, and some other painters have depicted them. I mentioned this once to Professor Owen, our great natural philosopher, in a talk I had with him on human flight, and he thought such seraphim very remarkable in the light of analogous comparative anatomy.

Ovid also in a passage before me advocates our imitation of birds if we would fly bodily: in his "De Icari Casu," he says (with omissions)—

"Naturamque novat: nam ponit in ordine pennas A minima coeptas, longam breviore sequenti: ... Sic imitentur aves: geminas libravit in alas Ipse suum corpus, motaque pependit in aura."

Which, being interpreted, means this,—

"Nature he reproduces, ranging fine From least to longest feathery plumes aline, Thus imitating birds, that on the air With balanced wings are poised in lightness there."

Whilst our noble Laureate in "Locksley Hall" goes in for aerial machines, "Argosies of magic sails," and "airy navies grappling in the central blue."

As to that essay of mine published in the first number of Ainsworth's Magazine, August 1842, long before the Patent Aerial Company started their projects, and very much noticed at the time,—Mr. Claude Hamilton ingrafted it in his work on Flying; the Duke of Argyll in a note before me commends this principle of copying nature as the true one; a Signor Ignazio of Milan in 1877 adopted almost exactly my Flying Man,—which was for the lecture enlarged from Cruikshank's etching of my own sketch: an aerial flapping machine, a sort of flying wheelbarrow, was some twenty years ago exhibited at Kensington: whilst in the Daily Telegraph for July 10, 1874, you will find recorded the untimely death of one M. de Groof, the Flying Man, who unhappily perished at Cremorne after a successful flight of 5000 feet. All these are on record.

Extract from Proverbial Philosophy (Series iv. p. 375).

Of Change and Travel.

"All of us have within us the wandering Crusoe spirit; We come of Norse sea-rovers, and adventurers full of hope: And man was bade to tame his earth, to rule it and subdue it,— Whereby our feet-soles tingle at an untrod Alpine peak— But shall we not fly anon with wings, to shame these creeping paces, Even as steam hath worked all speed on land and sea before? Is not this firmament of air part of the human heritage, Which man must conquer duteously, as first his Maker willed? There needeth but a lighter gas, well-tutored to our skill, The springing spirit to some shape of delicate steel and silk,— A bird-like frame of Daedalus, and gummed Icarian plumes, Ancient inventions, long forgotten, to be found anew! When shall the chemist mix aright this rarer lifting essence To make the lord of earth but equal to his many sparrows? When will discovery help us to such conquest of the air, And teach us swifter travel than our creeps by land and water?"

And finally from my "Three Hundred Sonnets" hear Sonnet No. 189—

"Spirit."

"Throw me from this tall cliff,—my wings are strong, The hurricane is raging fierce and high, My spirit pants, and all in heat I long To fly right upward to a purer sky, And spurn the clouds beneath me rolling by; Lo thus, into the buoyant air I leap Confident and exulting, at a bound Swifter than whirlwinds happily to sweep On fiery wing the reeling world around: Off with my fetters!—who shall hold me back? My path lies there,—the lightning's sudden track O'er the blue concave of the fathomless deep,— O that I thus could conquer space and time, Soaring above this world in strength sublime!"



CHAPTER XLVIII.

LUTHER.

I gave a second lecture, one on Luther, at the same place, and on the like solicitation of Mr. Le Fevre, President of the Balloon Society; the date being November 9, 1883.

Of this lecture, not to be tedious, I will here give only the peroration.

"And now, in conclusion, let us answer these reasonable questions: What has Martin Luther done and suffered that we at this distant interval of four centuries should reverence his memory with gratitude and admiration? What was the lifework he was raised up to do, and how did he do it? and what influence have his labours of old on the times in which we live?—We must remember that in the sixteenth century priestcraft had culminated to its rankest height of fraud, cruelty, vice, and superstition: the lay-folk everywhere were its serfs and victims, not to mention also numbers of the worthier clerics who hated but could, not break their bonds. Luther was the solitary champion to head and lead both the remonstrant layman and the better sort of monk up to the then well-nigh forlorn hope of combating Antichrist in his stronghold: Luther broke those chains for ever off the necks of groaning nations,—freeing to this day from that bitter bondage not alone Germany, Sweden, France, and England, but the very ends of the earth from America to China: without the energies of Luther nearly four hundred years ago, and the living spirit of Luther working in us now, we should be still in our own persons adding to the Book of Martyrs in the flames of the Inquisition, still immersed in blankest ignorance, with the Bible everywhere forbidden, and scientific research condemned, still cringing slaves at the feet of confessors who fraudulently sell absolution for money, still both spiritually and politically the mean vassals of an Italian priest instead of brave freemen under our English Queen. Luther relit the well-nigh, extinguished lamp of true religion, and it shines for him all the more gloriously to this hour: Luther refreshed the gospel salt that had through corruption lost its savour, until now it is more antiseptic than ever as the cure of evil, more purifying than ever as the quickener of good: Luther, under God's good grace and providence, has rescued the conscience and reason of our whole race from the thraldom of self-elected spiritual despots, who worked upon the superstitious fears of men as to another-world in order to strengthen their own power in this: Luther, for the result of his great labours, is more to us now than ever was the fabulous Hercules of old,—for he has cleansed the real Augaean stable,—more than any mythical William Tell,—for he has ensured the boon of everlasting liberty, more to us than a whole army of so-called heroes in conquest, patriotism, or even local philanthropy,—for the enemies he fought and vanquished were our spiritual foes,—the country he opened to us is the heavenly one,—the good-doing, he inaugurated is wide as the world, and shines an electric universal threefold light of faith, hope, and charity."

Luther.

Written by request, for the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth.

"Martin Luther! deathless name, Noblest on the scroll of Fame, Solitary monk,—that shook All the world by God's own book; Antichrist's Davidian foe, Strong to lay Goliath low, Thee, in thy four-hundredth year, Gladly we remember here.

"How, without thy forceful mind, Now had fared all human kind,— Curst and scorch'd and chain'd by Rome, In each heart of hearth and home? But for thee, and thy grand hour, German light, and British power, With Columbia's faith and hope, All were crush'd beneath the Pope!

"God be thank'd for this bright morn, When Eisleben's babe was born! For the pious peasant's son, Liberty's great fight hath won,— When at Wittenberg he stood All alone for God and good, And his Bible flew unfurl'd, Flag of freedom to the world!"

The Reverend E. Bullinger set this to excellent music; and it was translated for Continental use into German, French, Swedish, and Hungarian in the same metre.

As quite a cognate subject here shall be added my ballad on Wycliffe, also written by request:—

Wycliffe.

"Distant beacon on the night Full five centuries ago,— Harbinger of Luther's light, Now four hundred years aglow,— Priest of Lutterworth we see All of Luther-worth in thee!

"Lo, the wondrous parallel,— Both gave Bibles to their land; While, the rage of Rome to quell, Princes stood on either hand, John of Gaunt, and Saxon John, Cheered each bold confessor on.

"Both are rescuers of souls, Cleansing those Augaean styes— Superstition's hiding holes, Nunneries and monkeries; Both gave liberty to men, Bearding lions in their den!

"Wycliffe, Luther! glorious pair, Great Twin Brethren of mankind; Conscience was your guide and care, Purifying heart and mind; Both before your judges stood, 'Here I stand, for God and good.'

"Each had liv'd a martyr's life, Still protesting for the faith; Yet amid that fiery strife, Each escap'd the martyr's death; Rescued from the fangs of Rome, Both died peacefully at home."



CHAPTER XLIX.

FINAL.

A few last words as to sundry life-experiences. Whether we notice it or not, we are guided and guarded and led on through many changes and chances to the gates of death in a marvellously predestined manner; if we pray about everything, we shall see and know that, as Pope says,

"In spite of wrong, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right;"

and the trustful assurance that the highest wisdom and mercy and power orders all things will give us comfort under whatever circumstances. I believe in prayer as the universal panacea, philosophically as well as devoutly; and that "walking with God" is our highest wisdom as well as our deepest comfort.

* * * * *

Let no man think that a sick-bed is the best place to repent in. When the brain is clouded by bodily ailment there is neither capacity nor even will to mend matters; a man is at the best then tired, lazy, and dull, but if there is pain too all is worse. Listen to one of my old sonnets, and take its good advice:—

"Delay not, sinner, till the hour of pain To seek repentance: pain is absolute, Exacting all the body, all the brain, Humanity's stern king from head to foot: How canst thou pray, while fever'd arrows shoot Through this torn targe,—while every bone doth ache, And the soared mind raves up and down her cell Restless, and begging rest for mercy's sake? Add not to death the bitter fear of hell; Take pity on thy future self, poor man, While yet in strength thy timely wisdom can; Wrestle to-day with sin; and spare that strife Of meeting all its terrors in the van Just at the ebbing agony of life."

I have great faith in first impressions of intuitive liking or disliking. Second thoughts are by no means best always nor even often. Charity sometimes tries to induce, one to think better of such a person or such a situation than a first feeling shrinks from,—but it won't do for long: the man or the place will continue to be distasteful. My spirit apprehends instinctively the right and the true; and through life I have relied on intuitions; which some have called a rashness, recommending colder cautions; but these latter have seldom paid their way. A country parson was right in his diagnosis of Iscariot's character as that of "a low mean fellow;" and he judged reasonably that all the patient kindliness of One who strove to make such His "own familiar friend" was so much charity almost thrown away, except indeed as to spiritual improvement of the charitable.

* * * * *

It is right that in a book of self-revelations, like this genuine autobiography, some special recognition should be made before its close of gratitude to the Great Giver of all good, and of the spiritual longings of His penitent. These feelings I prefer to show after the author's poetic custom in verse. Let the first be a trilogy of unpublished sonnets lately written on

What We Shall Be.

I.

"We—all and each—have faculties and powers Here undeveloped, lying deep within, Crush'd by the weight of circumstance and sin; Latent, as germs conceal their hidden flowers, Till some new clime, with genial suns and showers Give them the force consummate life to win: Even so we, poor prisoners of Time, Victims of others' evil and our own, Cannot expand in this tempestuous clime, But full of excellences in us sown, Must wait that better life, and there, full blown, In spiritual perfectness sublime The prizes of our nature we shall gain, Which now we struggle for in vain—in vain!"

II.

"Who does not feel within him he could be Anything, everything, of great and good? That, give him but the chance, he could and would Soar on the wings of triumph strong and free? And think not this is vanity, for he, If one of Glory's heirs, is of the band 'I said that ye are gods!'—on this we stand Through the eternal ages infinite, Growing like Christ in hope and love and light As grafted into Him: there shall we see, And know as we are known; no hindrance then Shall bind our wings, or shut our eyes or ears; Led upward, onward, through ten million years, We shall expand in spirit,—but still be Men."

III.

"Each hath his specialty; we see in some Music or painting, eloquence or skill, With, or without, an effort of the will, As by spontaneous inspiration come Ev'n in this mingled crowd of good and ill, To make us hail a Wonder:—but Elsewhere Without or let or hindrance we shall use Forces neglected here, but nurtured there; Till all the powers of every classic Muse, Ninefold, may dwell in each—as each may choose: Since Heaven for creatures must have creature gifts, Not only love, religion, gratitude, But also light, and every force that lifts Man's spirit to the heights of Great and Good."

For a second take my recent open protest against the pestilential atheism so rife in our midst:—

I.

"My Father! everpresent, everwise, and everkind,— The Life that pulses at my heart, the Light within my mind,— My Maker, Guardian, Guide, and God, my never-failing Friend, Who hitherto hast blest me, and wilt bless me to the end,— How should I not acknowledge Thee in all my words and ways, And bring my doubts to Thee in prayer, the prayer that turns to praise? How can I cease to trust Thee, who hast guided me so long, And been from earliest childhood to old age my strength and song?

II.

"My Father! Great Triunity! For Thou art One in Three, The mystery of mysteries, a threefold joy to me,— What deep delight to dwell upon the philosophic plan Of Thy divine self-sacrifice in God becoming man, And taking on Thyself in Christ the sins and woes of all Redeemed to higher glory from the ruin of their fall, As humbled and enlightened and enlivened into love, By the Pure Spirit of sweet peace, the-heart-indwelling Dove!

III.

"My Father, Abba, Father! For Thou callest me Thy child, As in Thy holy Jesus and Good Spirit reconciled,— O Father, in this evil day when atheism is found Dropping its poison seeds about in all our fallow-ground, Shall I keep coward silence, and ungenerously forget The Friend that hitherto hath helped me—and shall help me yet? Shall unbelief, all unabashed, proclaim that God is Not,— Nor faith with honest zeal be quick this hideous lie to blot?

IV.

"Ho! Christian soldier,—to the front! and boldly speak aloud The dear old truths denied by yonder Sadducean crowd,— That every inch and every instant we are guided well By Him who made, and loved, and loves us more than tongue can tell; That, though there be dread mysteries of cruelty and crime, And marvellous long-suffering patience with these wrongs of time, Still, wait a little longer, and we soon shall know the cause For every seeming error in the Ruler's righteous laws!

V.

"A little longer, and our faith and hope and works of love Shall reap munificent reward in those blest orbs above, Where He (who being God of old became our brother here) Shall welcome us and speed us on' from glorious sphere to sphere, Until before His Father's throne the Spirit with the Son Shall give to every Christian then the crown his Lord hath won; And through the ages in all worlds our wondrous ransomed race Shall bless the Universal King of Providence and Grace!"

For a third, my testimony as to the wonders that surround us: I have called this poem The Infinities.

I.

"Lift up your eyes to yon star-jewelled sky, Gaze on that firmament caverned on high,— Marvellous universe, infinite space, Studded with suns in fixt order and place, Each with its system of planets unseen, Meshed in their orbits by comets between, Worlds that are vaster than mind may believe, Whirling more swiftly than thought can conceive, O ye immensities! Who shall declare The glory of God in His galaxies there?

II.

"Look too on this poor planet of ours, Torn by the storms of mysterious powers, Evil contending with good from its birth, Wrenching in battle the heartstrings of earth,— Ah! what infinities circle us here, Strangeness and wonderment swathing the sphere! Providence ruleth with care most minute, Yet is fell cruelty torturing the mute, Infinite marvels of wrong and of right, Blessing and blasting each day and each night.

III.

"All things in mystery; riddles unread; Nothing but dimness of guesses instead; Only beginning, where none see the end, Nor where these infinite energies tend; Saving that chrysalis-creatures are we, Till we grow wings in that aeon-to-be! Everything infinite: Nature, and Art, The schemes of man's mind, and the throbs of his heart; Infinite cravings for better, and best, Tempered by infinite longings for rest.

IV.

"Then, as the telescope's miracle drew Infinite Heaven's vast worlds into view, So doth the microscope's marvel display Infinite atomies, wondrous as they! A mere drop of water, a bubble of air, Teems with perfections of littleness there; Infinite wisdom in exquisite works All but invisible everywhere lurks, While we confess as in great so in small, Infinite skill in the Maker of all.

V.

"And there be grander infinities still, Where, in Emmanuel, good has quench'd ill; Infinite humbleness, highest and first, Choosing the doom of the lowest and worst; Infinite pity, and patience,—how long? Infinite justice, avenging all wrong, Infinite purity, wisdom, and skill, Bettering good through each effort of ill, Infinite beauty and infinite love, Shining around and beneath and above!"

And let this simple hymn be the old man's last prayer, bridging over the long interval of well-nigh fourscore years between cradle and grave with a child's first piety:—

Love and Life.

"'My son, give Me thine heart;' Yes, Abba, Father, yes! Perfect in goodness as Thou art, I will not give Thee less.

"But I am dark and dead, And need Thy grace to live; Father, on me Thy Spirit shed, To me that sunshine give!

"Thus only can I say When Thou dost ask my love, I will return in earth's poor way Thy gift from heaven above.

"There is no good in me But droppeth from on high, Then quicken me with life from Thee, That I may never die.

"For if I am a son— O grace beyond compare!— A child of God, with Jesus one, In Him I stand an heir;

"In Him I live and move, And only so can give An immortality of love, To Thee by whom I live.

"Then melt this heart of stone, And grant the heart of flesh, That all I am may be Thine own, Renewed to love afresh."

About the much-vexed question of Eschatology and the final state of the dead, I have long since grown to the happy doctrine of Eternal Hope—ultimately for all; perhaps even siding with Burns, who (as the only logical way of eliminating evil) gives a chance to the "puir Deil:" albeit the path for some must be through the terrible Gehenna of fire to purify, and with few stripes or many to satisfy conscience and evoke character. As for that text in Ecclesiastes about the "tree lying where it fell," commonly supposed to prove an unchanging state for ever,—it is obvious to answer that when a tree is cut down, its final course of usefulness only then begins, by being sawn up and converted into furniture; much as when a human being's work here is finished, he is taken hence to be utilised elsewhere. Everlasting progress is the law of our existence, whether here or elsewhere,—no stopping, far less annihilation. And then the character of our Maker is Love, this Love having satisfied Justice by self-sacrifice, and nothing is more reiterated in the Psalms than that "His mercy endureth for ever;" which cannot be true if bodies and spirits—even of the wicked—are to be condemned by Him to endless torment. Adequate punishment, and that for the wretched creature's own improvement, is only in accordance with the voice of reason, and the voice of inspired wisdom too; for though our Lord Christ warns against a fearful retribution (involved in the phrase of "the undying worm and the unquenchable fire," as He was looking over the wall of Jerusalem into Tophet and the valley of Hinnom where the offal from the thousands of sacrifices was perpetually rotting and being burned, so taking his parable from an incident, as usual)—He yet "went and preached after death to the spirits in prison," probably to those who were then enduring some such purgatorial punishment. After all, this sentence of King Solomon as to a fallen tree, so often misapplied, is not one of the higher forms of inspiration; even St. Paul qualifies his own sometimes; and there are several disputable texts in Proverbs: and, if taken literally for exposition, we all must admit that the felling, of a tree is the immediate precursor to its further life of usefulness. Let us, then, rationally hope that the dead in Christ will be improved from good to better and best; and that even those who have failed to live for Him in this world may by some purifying education in the next come finally to the happy far-off end of being saved by Him at last.

The words everlasting and forever are continually used in Scripture to indicate a long time,—not necessarily an eternity (see Cruden for many proofs). Moreover, if all hope of improvement ends with this life (a doctrine in which such extremes as Atheism and Calvinism strangely agree), what becomes of all the commonest forms of humanity, its intermediate failures, too bad for a heaven and too good for a hell; to say less of insane, idiotic, and other helpless creatures; and the millions of the untaught in Christendom, who never have had a chance, and billions of the Heathen brutalised through the ages by birth and evil custom? Yes; for all there must be in the near hereafter continuous new chances of improvement and hopes of better life.

There is one poem in the volume superadded to my Dramatics which I will introduce here, as it is quite a tour de force in its way of double rhyming throughout, and has, moreover, excellent moral uses: so I wish it read more widely.

Behind the Veil.

"Mysteries! crowding around us, How ye perplex and confound us,— Each our ignorance screening Hidden in words without meaning!

"Who knoweth aught that is certain Veil'd behind mystery's curtain? Seeing the wisest of guesses Foolishness only expresses.

"Ancestry? ruthlessly moulding Bodies and souls in unfolding; How such a mixture confuses Judgment's indulgent excuses,—

"While the derivative nature, Still a responsible creature, Yields individual merits, Biassed by what it inherits.

"Circumstance? mighty to fashion Instant occasion for passion, Gripping with clutch of a bandit Weakness too weak to withstand it,—

"What? shall it mar me or make me? Neither, till faith shall forsake me— For, with good courage to nerve me, Circumstance only can serve me!

"Destiny? doth it then seem so? Or can the will we esteem so, Change the decree at a bidding, Us of that destiny ridding,—

"If with no fatalist weakness, Battling in boldness and meekness, We are determined to master Every defeat and disaster?

"Providence? ordering all things, Both of the great and the small things, Equally each of us guiding, Guarding, destroying, providing,—

"Fixt, beyond human forecasting, Both as to blessing and blasting,— Yet, though we darkly discern Him, Quick'ning the prayer that may turn Him!

"Evil?—O direst enigma, Whispered and terrible stigma By fools to the Good One imputed, As if everlastingly rooted!

"How so? shall wrong to no ending Still with the Right be contending? Must not the bitterest leaven Melt in the mercy of Heaven?

"Or can old Baal, the sun-god, Boast there are two gods, not one god, Satan, the rebel infernal, Regent with Christ the Supernal?

"Come, blessed end, through the ages, When no more wickedness rages, When no iniquity hinders, But sin is burnt down to its cinders!—

"Cruelties?—somehow permitted,— With its mute victims unpitied, Tortured in nature's defiance On the false pretext of science,—

"Shall not some aeon of gladness, Balance the throes of pain-madness,— Must not the crime of the cruel Burn into souls as its fuel?

"Never can wisdom's creation Be stultified annihilation, But every poor unit that liveth Shall live in the life that He giveth,—

"Yea, for that aeon of glory, Revealed in millennial story, When earth with beatified features, Shines the new Heaven of creatures.

"Death? Is it all things, or nothing? Either the Spirit unclothing Unto new living for ever,— Or the dread penalty—never!

"Death,—if thou art but the portal, Leading to glories immortal, Why should we tremble to near thee, How be the cowards to fear thee,

"Since the worlds blazing above us, Peopled by angels who love us, Stand our fatherly mansions, Fitted for spirits' expansions?

"Where are the dead? and what doing? Still their old trifles pursuing? Or in the trance of a slumber, Crowded by dreams without number?—

"Dreams of unspeakable sadness, Breams of ineffable gladness,— As the quick conscience remembers Evil and good in their embers,—

"As it lives over in quiet, Time and its orgies of riot, Or the good gifts and good graces, Bright'ning its happier phases,—

"As it sees photograph'd clearly, Crystalised sharply and nearly, Life and its million transactions, Fancies and feelings and factions,—

"Every prayer ever uttered, Every curse ever muttered, All the man's lowest and highest,— These are thyself, when thou diest!

"Filling thee, after thy measure, From the full river of pleasure, Or, as the fruit of thy sowing, Pangs of remorse ever growing,—

"In thee all Heaven upspringing, Or its dread opposite flinging Blackness and darkness about thee,— Both are within, not without thee!

"Yet,—in that darkness, we grope for Somewhat far off, yet to hope for, That through some future repentance, Justice may soften its sentence.

"Ere from the dead He had risen, 'He preached to the spirits in prison,'— Is this a text that His aid is Still to be hoped for in Hades?

"'Wrath may endure for a season,' Both in religion and reason,— But if its end must be never, Where is His mercy for ever'?

"Ay,—after long retribution, Mercy may drag from pollution Souls that have suffered for ages, Working out sin's bitter wages,—

"So that the end shall be glorious, Good over evil victorious, And this black sin-night of sorrow, Blaze into gladness to-morrow!"

And so I make an end of this autobiography, with the humble prayer that I may have grace given to finish my course in this life usefully and with honour, at peace with God and man; mindful of that caution of Tellus, the Athenian, as recorded by Herodotus, "not to judge any man happy until he is dead;"—the Christian adds, "and is alive again!"

Let me conclude with some noble lines of Ovid in his Epilogue to the Metamorphoses, which I have Englished below:—

"Jamque opus exegi: quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas. Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi,— Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar: nomenque erit indelebile nostrum. Quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, Ore legar populi; perque omnia saecula fama Si quid habent veri vatum praesagia VIVAM."

"Now have I done my work: which not Jove's ire Can make undone, nor sword nor time nor fire. Whene'er that day, whose only powers extend Against this body, my brief life shall end, Still in my better portion evermore Above the stars undying shall I soar. My name shall never die; but through all time Whenever Rome shall reach a conquer'd clime, There, in that people's tongue, shall this my page Be read and glorified from age to age:— Yea, if the bodings of my spirit give True note of inspiration, I shall live!"

THE END.



Transcriber's Notes

Page 44: added closing parenthesis after "contempt]!" Page 296: added closing parenthesis after "patriotic but peculiar" Page 297: removed opening parenthesis after "Rifledom—were once to a comma"