in a moment--all that I love die so--my dearest roses live not half so long as those I neglect--you were absent for seven moons since I first saw you, and the beautiful world lived only a moment.” “The stranger again directed the telescope towards the shore of India, from which they were not far distant, and Immalee again exclaimed in rapture, “Alive and more beautiful than ever!--all living, thinking things!--their _very walk thinks_. No mute fishes, and senseless trees, but wonderful rocks(12), on which they look with pride, as if they were the works of their own hands. Beautiful rocks! how I love the perfect straitness of your sides, and the crisped and flower-like knots of your decorated tops! Oh that flowers grew, and birds fluttered round you, and then I would prefer you even to the rocks under which I watch the setting sun! Oh what a world must that be where nothing is natural, and every thing beautiful!--thought must have done all that. But, how _little every thing is_!--thought should have made every thing larger--_thought should be a god_. But,” she added with quick intelligence and self-accusing diffidence, “perhaps I am wrong. Sometimes I have thought I could lay my hand on the top of a palm-tree, but when, after a long, long time, I came close to it, I could not have reached its lowest leaf were I ten times higher than I am. Perhaps your beautiful world may grow higher as I approach it.”--“Hold, Immalee,” said the stranger, taking the telescope from her hands, “to enjoy this sight you should understand it.”--“Oh yes!” said Immalee, with submissive anxiety, as the world of sense rapidly lost ground in her imagination against the new-found world of mind,--“yes--let me think.”--“Immalee, have you any religion?” said the visitor, as an indescribable feeling of pain made his pale brow still paler. Immalee, quick in understanding and sympathising with physical feeling, darted away at these words, returned in a moment with a banyan leaf, with which she wiped the drops from his livid forehead; and then seating herself at his feet, in an attitude of profound but eager attention, repeated, “_Religion!_ what is that? is it a new thought?”--“It is the consciousness of a Being superior to all worlds and their inhabitants, because he is the Maker of all, and will be their judge--of a Being whom we cannot see, but in whose power and presence we must believe, though invisible--of one who is every where unseen; always acting, though never in motion; hearing all things, but never heard.” Immalee interrupted with an air of distraction--“Hold! too many thoughts will kill me--let me pause. I have seen the shower that came to refresh the rose-tree beat it to the earth.” After an effort of solemn recollection, she added, “The voice of dreams told me something like that before I was born, but it is so long ago,--sometimes I have had thoughts within me like that voice. I have thought I loved the things around me too much, and that I