To use the innermost eyes of his soul in such looking backward down the stream of Time, as well as in looking forward to that 'crystal sea' of the unknown Future, flowing round the Great White Throne whence the river of life proceeds, was a favourite mental occupation with John Walden. He loved antiquarian research, and all such scientific problems as involve abstruse study and complex calculation,--but equally he loved the simplest flower and the most ordinary village tale of sorrow or mirth recounted to him by any one of his unlessoned parishioners. He gave himself such change of air and scene as he thought he required, by taking long swinging walks about the country, and found sufficient relaxation in gardening, a science in which he displayed considerable skill. No one in all the neighbourhood could match his roses, or offer anything to compare with the purple and white masses of violets which, quite early in January came out under his glass frames not only perfect in shape and colour, but full of the real 'English' violet fragrance, a benediction of sweetness which somehow seems to be entirely withheld from the French and Russian blooms. For the rest, he was physically sound and morally healthy, and lived, as it were, on the straight line from earth to heaven, beginning each day as if it were his first life-opportunity, and ending it soberly and with prayer, as though it were his last. To such a mind and temperament as his, the influences of Nature, the sublime laws of the Universe, and the environment of existence, must needs move in circles of harmonious unity, making loveliness out of commonness, and poetry out of prose. The devotee of what is mistakenly called 'pleasure,'--enervated or satiated with the sickly moral exhalations of a corrupt society,--would be quite at a loss to understand what possible enjoyment could be obtained by sitting placidly under an apple-tree with a well-thumbed volume of the wisdom of the inspired pagan Slave, Epictetus, in the hand, and the eyes fixed, not on any printed page, but on a spray of warmly- blushing almond blossom, where a well-fed thrush, ruffling its softly speckled breast, was singing a wild strophe concerning its mate, which, could human skill have languaged its meaning, might have given ideas to a nation's laureate. Yet John Walden found unalloyed happiness in this apparently vague and vacant way. There was an acute sense of joy for him in the repeated sweetness of the thrush's warbling,--the light breeze, stirring through a great bush of early flowering lilac near the edge of the lawn, sent out a wave of odour which tingled through his sensitive blood like wine,--the sunlight was warm and comforting, and altogether there seemed nothing wrong with the world, particularly as the morning's newspapers had not yet come in. With them would probably arrive the sad savour of human mischief and muddle, but till these daily morbid