"Yes," said Henry, "we began to speak of childhood's years, and of education, because we are in your garden; and the revelation of childhood, the innocent world of flowers, imperceptibly brought to our thoughts and lips the recollection of old acquaintanceship. My father is also very fond of gardening, and spends the happiest hours of his life among the flowers. This has certainly kept his heart open towards children, since flowers are their counterpart. The teeming opulence of infinite life, the mighty powers of later times, the splendor of the end of the world, and the golden future which awaits all things, we here see closely entwined, but still to be most plainly and clearly in tender youthfulness. All-powerful love is already working, but does not yet enflame; it is no devouring fire, but a melting vapor; and however intimate the union of the tenderest souls may be, yet it is accompanied by no intense excitement, no consuming madness, as in brutes. Thus is childhood below here nearest to the earth; as on the other hand clouds are perhaps the types of the second, higher childhood, of the paradise regained; and hence they so beneficently shed their dew upon the first." "There is indeed something very mysterious in the clouds," said Sylvester, "and certain overcloudings often have a wonderful influence upon us. Trailing over our heads, they would take us up and away in their cold shades; and when their form is lovely and varied, like an outbreathed wish of our soul, then the clearness and the splendid light, which reigns upon earth, is like a presage of unknown, ineffable glory. But there are also dark, solemn, and fearful overcloudings, in which all the terrors of old night appear to threaten. The sky seems as if it never would be clear again; the serene blue is hidden; and a wan copper hue upon the dark gray ground awakens fear and anxiety in every bosom. Then when the blasting beams shoot downwards, and with fiendish laughter the crashing thunder-peals fall after them, we are struck to our souls; and unless there arises the lofty consciousness of our moral superiority, we fancy that we are delivered over to the terrors of hell and all the powers of darkness. They are echoes of the old, unhuman nature, but awakening voices too of the higher nature of divine conscience within us. The mortal totters to its base; the immortal grows more serene and recognises itself." "Then," said Henry, "when will there be no more terror or pain, want or evil in the universe?" "When there is but one power, the power of conscience; when nature becomes chaste and pure. There is but one cause of evil,--common frailty,--and this frailty is nothing but a weak moral susceptibility, and a deficiency in the attraction of freedom." "Explain to me the nature of Conscience." "I were God, could I do so; for when we comprehend it, Conscience exists. Can you explain to me the essence of poetry?" "A personality cannot be distinctly defined."