_There_, let us trust, all lives which seem to us to have snapped asunder here, in imperfect fruition of bright promise, may find their perfect fulfilment of desire. As Faber poetically says:--"Death, after all, is a darkening and disappearance of those we love, and we must be content to take it so. It is only a question of more or less, where the darkness shall begin, and what it shall eclipse first. To the others who have loved the dying, and have gone before him, it is not a darkening, but a dawning. Perhaps to them it is the brightest dawn when it has been the most opaque and colourless sunset on the side of the earth." Or as Keble, with divine humility of richest spiritual imaginativeness, expresses it-- "Ever the richest tenderest glow Sets round the autumnal sun-- But there sight fails: no heart may know The bliss when life is done." J.E.H. 20, Earl's Court Square, South Kensington, London, October 20th, 1889. * * * * * _Extract from_ "THE DELHI GAZETTE," _August 19th_, 1889. A LIFE OF PROMISE ABRUPTLY ENDED.--It was with feelings of deep sorrow that we read in _The Pioneer_ of Friday last the death notice of Mr. William McNair, the Kafiristan explorer. A man singularly frank and genial, he was 33 years of age when he undertook the venture that won for him the medal and fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society which were conferred in 1884. In that year he had the satisfaction of lecturing before British audiences on the results of his travels, and as it was the first time he had visited the land of his fathers the pleasure of seeing the old country under circumstances so honourable to himself was doubly keen.