There never was a time in which the “higher life,” “high art,” etc., were less known than in the present, when every goose is gabbling about them. The proof is in the way these names are constantly associated with that of “progress”; whereas progress, as respects the realities, is, if it exists at all, most certainly a progress backwards. The rejoicings of Lord Macaulay and his like over the recent advances of mankind are exactly those of a prosperous shopman over the increase of his business; and the hallelujahs of science are mainly over the elaboration of mighty means for petty ends and of theories which explain away God and exhibit all that past ages have called wisdom as folly. It is too absurd! Yet we must not allow the present eclipse of the electric lights of true learning by the flaring tar-barrels of jubilant ignorance to discourage us in the belief that there is, on the whole, no cessation of the work for which the world goes on. The conscience of mankind, though occasionally confused and obscured, will always cry “Amen” to the great word of St. Augustine, “What ought to be must be;” and the rare achievements of genius and sanctity and the few and far-between glimpses of the life that is indeed life, which are accorded to all, will continue to be accepted as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” V CHEERFULNESS IN LIFE AND ART “Rejoice always: and again I say, Rejoice,” says one of the highest authorities; and a poet who is scarcely less infallible in psychological science writes-- A cheerful heart is what the Muses love. Dante makes Melancholy dismally punished in Purgatory; though his own interior gaiety--of which a word by and by--is so interior, and its outward aspect often so grim, that he is vulgarly considered to have himself been a sinner in this sort. Good art is nothing but a representation of life; and that the good are gay is a commonplace, and one which, strange to say, is as generally disbelieved as it is, when rightly understood, undeniably true. The good and brave heart is always gay in this sense: that, although it may be afflicted and oppressed by its own misfortunes and those of others, it refuses in the darkest moment to consent to despondency; and thus a habit of mind is formed which can discern in most of its own afflictions some cause for grave rejoicing, and can thence infer at least a probability of such cause in cases where it cannot be discerned. Regarding thus cheerfully and hopefully its own sorrows, it is not over-troubled by those of others, however tender and helpful its sympathies may be. It is impossible to weep much for that in others which we should smile at in ourselves; and when we see a soul writhing like a worm under what seems to us a small misfortune, our pity for its misery is much mitigated by contempt for its cowardice.