for some unimagined freedom, some perfect tranquillity that he yearned. It was like the desire of the stranded boat for the motion and dip of the blue sea-billows. He would have hoisted the sail of his thought, have left the world behind, steering out across the hissing, leaping seas, till he should see at last the shadowy summits, the green coves of some remote land, draw near across the azure sea-line. To-day the fretful and poisonous ambitions of the world seemed alien and intolerable to him. As the dweller in wide fields sees the smoke of the distant town rise in a shadowy arc upon the horizon, and thinks with pity of the toilers there in the hot streets, so Hugh thought of the intricate movement of life as of a thing that was both remote and insupportable. That world where one jostled and strove, where one made so many unwilling mistakes, where one laboured so unprofitably, was it not, after all, an ugly place? What seemed so strange to him was that one should be set so unerringly in the middle of it, while at the same time one was given the sense of its unreality, its distastefulness. So marvellously was one made that one sickened at its contact, and yet, if one separated oneself from it, one drooped and languished in a morbid gloom. The burden of the flesh! The frailty of the spirit! The two things seemed irreconcilable, and yet one endured them both. The world so full of beauty and joy, and yet the one gift withheld that would make one content. And yet it was undeniable that the very sadness that he felt had a sweet fragrance about it. It was not the sadness of despair, but of hope unfulfilled. The soul clasped hands with the unknown, with tears of joy, and leaned out of the world as from a casement, on perilous seas. Indeed the very wealth of loveliness on every hand, and the mysterious yearning to take hold of it, to make it one's own, to draw it into the spirit, the hope that seemed at once so possible and yet so baffling, gave the key of the mystery. There _was_ a beauty, there _was_ a truth that was waiting for one, and the sweetness here was a type of the unseen. It was only the narrow soul that grudged if it was not satisfied. The brave heart went quietly and simply about its task, welcoming every delicate sight, every whisper of soft airs, every touch of loving hands, every glance of gentle eyes, rejoicing in the mystery of it all; thanking the Lord of life for the speechless wonder of it, and even daring to thank Him that the end was not yet; and that the bird must still speed onwards to the home of its heart, dipping its feet in the crest of the wandering wave, till the land, whither it was bound, should rise like a soft shadow over the horizon; till the shadow became a shape, and at last the tall cliffs, with the green downs above, the glittering plain, the sombre forest, loomed out above one, just beyond where the waves whitened on the loud sea-beaches, and the