But it is not necessary to be either unfortunate oneself or a very “poor creature” to feel that the wrongs and agonies of this world of pain are absolutely intolerable unless we can be assured that they will be righted hereafter; that “there is a God who judgeth the earth,” and that all the oppressed and miserable of our race, aye, and even the tortured brutes, are beheld by Him. It is, I think, on the contrary, to be a “poor creature” to be able to satisfy the hunger of the soul after justice, the yearning of the heart for mercy, with such pursuits as money-getting, and scientific research, and the writing of clever books, and painting of pretty pictures. Not that which is “poorest” in us, but that which is richest and noblest, refuses to “occupy every moment of a long life” with our own ambitions and amusements, or to shut out deliberately from our minds the “Riddle of the painful Earth.” A curse would be on us in our “lordly pleasure-house” were we to do it. Even if it be possible to enjoy our own good fortune regardless of the woes of others, is it not rather a pitiful wreck and remnant of merely selfish happiness which it is proposed to leave to us? “The world,” we are told, “is full of pleasant people and curious things,” and “most men find no difficulty in _turning their minds away_ from its transient character.” Even our enjoyment of “pleasant people and curious things” must be held, then, on the condition of reducing ourselves—philosophers that we are, or shall be—to the humble level of the hares and rabbits!— “Regardless of their doom the little victims play.” Surely the happiness of any creature, deserving to be called Rational, depends on the circumstance whether he can look on Good as “the final goal of ill,” or believe Ill to be the final goal of any good he has obtained or hopes for;—whether he walk on a firm, even if it be a thorny road, or tread on thin, albeit glittering ice, destined ere long to break beneath his feet? The faith that there is an ORDER tending everywhere to good, and that JUSTICE sooner or later will be done to all,—this, almost universal, faith to which the whole literature of the world bears testimony, seems to me no less indispensable for our selfish happiness than it is for any unselfish satisfaction in the aspect of human life at large. If it be finally baulked, and we are compelled to relinquish it for ever at the bidding of science, existence alike on our own account and that of others will become unendurable.