the smallest degree in virtue of the evil. I thought it was time for me to take my leave. But I could not bear to run away with the last word, as it were: so I said, “You put plenty of poetry yourself into that voluntary you played last Sunday. I am so much obliged to you for it!” “Oh! that fugue. You liked it, did you?” “More than I can tell you.” “I am very glad.” “Do you know those two lines of Milton in which he describes such a performance on the organ?” “No. Can you repeat them?” “‘His volant touch, Instinct through all proportions, low and high, Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.’” “That is wonderfully fine. Thank you. That is better than my fugue by a good deal. You have cancelled the obligation.” “Do you think doing a good turn again is cancelling an obligation? I don’t think an obligation can ever be RETURNED in the sense of being got rid of. But I am being hypercritical.” “Not at all.—Shall I tell you what I was thinking of while playing that fugue?” “I should like much to hear.” “I had been thinking, while you were preaching, of the many fancies men had worshipped for the truth; now following this, now following that; ever believing they were on the point of laying hold upon her, and going down to the grave empty-handed as they came.” “And empty-hearted, too?” I asked; but he went on without heeding me. “And I saw a vision of multitudes following, following where nothing was to be seen, with arms outstretched in all directions, some clasping vacancy to their bosoms, some reaching on tiptoe over the heads of their neighbours, and some with hanging heads, and hands clasped behind their backs, retiring hopeless from the chase.” “Strange!” I said; “for I felt so full of hope while you played, that I never doubted it was hope you meant to express.” “So I do not doubt I did; for the multitude was full of hope, vain hope, to lay hold upon the truth. And you, being full of the main expression, and in sympathy with it, did not heed the undertones of disappointment, or the sighs of those who turned their backs on the chase. Just so it is in life.” “I am no musician,” I returned, “to give you a musical counter to your picture. But I see a grave man tilling the ground in peace, and the form of Truth standing behind him, and folding her wings closer and closer over and around him as he works on at his day’s labour.” “Very pretty,” said Mr Stoddart, and said no more. “Suppose,” I went on, “that a person knows that he has not laid hold on the truth, is that sufficient ground for his making any further assertion than that he has not found it?” “No. But if he has tried hard and has not found ANYTHING that he can say is true, he cannot help thinking that most likely there is no such thing.”