The good God spared both of them to see their sons-in-law happy in their wives, and their daughters-in-law full of respect and tenderness for their husbands; and were they yet alive this day, they would see what deep roots their family had struck in their native land, because it has remained faithful to the vital germs of domestic life; the love of work; and religion: foundation that cannot be overthrown, unmoved by mocking chance, or wavering winds.” I have no time, this month, to debate any of the debateable matters in this story, though I have translated it that we may together think of them as occasion serves. In the meantime, note that the heads of question are these:— I. (Already suggested in p. 59 of my letter for March, 1874.) What are the relative dignities and felicities of affection, in simple and gentle loves? How far do you think the regard existing between Hansli and his wife may be compared, for nobleness and delight, to Sir Philip Sidney’s regard for—his neighbour’s wife; or the relations between Hansli and his sister, terminating in the brief ‘was not able to say much to her,’ comparable to those between Sidney and his sister, terminating in the completion of the brother’s Psalter by the sister’s indistinguishably perfect song? II. If there be any difference, and you think the gentle hearts have in anywise the better,—how far do you think this separation between gentle and simple inevitable? Suppose Sir Philip, for instance—among his many accomplishments—had been also taught the art of making brooms,—(as indeed I doubt not but his sister knew how to use them,)—and time had thus been left to the broom-makers of his day for the fashioning of sonnets? or the reading of more literature than a ‘chapitre’ on the Sunday afternoons? Might such—not ‘division’ but ‘collation’—of labour have bettered both their lives? III. Or shall we rather be content with the apparent law of nature that there shall be divine Astrophels in the intellectual heaven, and peaceful earthly glowworms on the banks below; or even—on the Evangelical theory of human nature—worms without any glow? And shall we be content to see our broom-makers’ children, at the best, growing up as willows by the brook—or in the simplest and innumerablest crowd, as rushes in a marsh;—so long as they have wholesome pith and sufficing strength to be securely sat upon in rush-bottomed chairs; while their masters’ and lords’ children grow as roses on the mount of Sharon, and untoiling lilies in the vales of Lebanon?