Years after the Ganges rolls by a ruined hut scarcely distinguishable from the rest of the forest, overgrown with green, and hung like funeral weeds with the vine and the trailing _arbutus_. Still cluster the lilies by the nurtured shore which had been trained by the hands of childhood—no longer do they raise their expectant heads to receive the caress of the maiden—no longer do their _corymbi_ deck the jetty locks of Ganga. In the brightness and joy of the morning; she had come thither directed by the hand of the goddess. From that natal morn of infancy she had dwelt in innocence by the sacred stream—full of life and the glory of beauty, she had arrived at full-blown maturity. At the noon, when the sun, like her life, had reached its culmination, in the ripened noon, she departed. Anon comes the silence and darkness of evening overtaking the pair in the forest—the drama of life is advancing, and sorrows must obscure her path like the shadows from the mountains descending—like the clouds which hide the evening red and fleck the glorious sunset. * * * * * Spirit of innate devotion! alike thou directest the rude and the cultivated, the peasant and the prince to avert at times their gaze from lower things and turn them to the Infinite Author—yet oftenest by adversity thou drawest the spirit heavenward, and by sundering the golden links of earthly affection preparest the soul with stronger wing to follow the fleeting yet much loved object—alike in every clime, in every age thy influence is acknowledged. Whether to the Roman thou breathest on the trembling leaves of the sybil; to the Greek neechæst in thunder tones from the Delphic; to the Zenton floatest in the mists that shroud the northern hills, or the shore-coming waves of the Baltic—to the Dane resounds in the mighty Valhalla with the ponderous strokes of Odin; to the Copt glitters in the morning beams that gilds the sands and deserts, or to the Druid whisperest amid the foliage of the sacred oak—within the burning tropic thy power is recognised in the bountiful forms of exuberant Nature, in the wayside shrines that glisten in the forest and the vast temples that penetrate the bosom of the fruitful earth our mother. Thus do the tropic luxuriance and the polar cold alike furnish ever new symbols for the Infinite, and by change contrast with the Eternal. The yellow glories of the fertile harvest but bear new witness to thy bounty, the pale beams of the Boreal light represent alone thy purity.