seamed by life,--I feel myself in the presence of something very divine indeed,--a perfectly pure, tender, joyful, human spirit, suffering the last extremity of discomfort and infirmity, and yet entirely radiant and undimmed. It is then that I feel inclined to kneel down before God, and thank Him humbly for having made and shown me so utterly beautiful a thing as that poor old woman's courage and sweetness. I feel as I suppose the devout Catholic feels before the reserved Sacrament in the shrine--in the presence of a divine mystery; and I rejoice silently that God is what He is, and that I see Him for once unveiled. "And then the sight of a happy and contented child, kind and spirited and affectionate, like little Molly Akers, never making a fuss, or seeming to want things for herself, or cross, or tiresome--that gives me the same feeling! Then flowers often give me the same feeling, with their cleanness and fresh beauty and pure outline and sweet scent--so useless in a way, often so unregarded, and yet so content just to be what they are, so apart from every stain and evil passion. "And then in the middle of that you see a man like Barlow stumbling home tipsy to his frightened wife and children, or you read a bad case in the papers, or a letter from a man of virtue finding fault with everybody and slinging pious Billingsgate about: or I lose my own temper about something, and feel I have made a hash of my life--and then I wonder what is the foul poison that has got into things, and what is the dismal ugliness that seems smeared all over life, so that the soul seems like a beautiful bird caught in a slime-pit, and trying to struggle out, with its pinions fouled and dabbled, wondering miserably what it has done to be so filthily hampered." He stopped for a minute, and I could see that his eyes were full of tears. "It is no good giving up the game!" he said. "We are in the devil of a mess, no doubt: and even if we try our best to avoid it, we dip into the slime sometimes! But we must hold fast to the beautiful things, and be on the look-out for them everywhere. Not shut our eyes in a rapture of sentiment, and think that we can: "'Walk all day, like the Sultan of old, in a garden of spice!' "That won't do, of course! We can't get out of it like that! But we must never allow ourselves to doubt the beauty and goodness of God, or make any mistake about which side He is on. The marvel of dear old Mrs. Chetwynd is just that beauty has triumphed, in spite of everything. With every kind of trouble, every temptation to be dispirited and spiteful and wretched, that fine spirit has got through--and, by George, I envy her the awakening, when that sweet old soul slips away from the cage where she is caught, and goes straight to the arms of God!"