It has been objected to it as a work of art that there is too much pain; and many have said to me, with some bitterness, "Why did you make me suffer so?" But I think of my father's answer when I told him this: "And why shouldn't they suffer? SHE suffered; it will do them good; for pity, genuine pity, is, as old Aristotle says, 'of power to purge the mind.'" And though in all works of art there should be a plus of delectation, the ultimate overcoming of evil and sorrow by good and joy,--the end of all art being pleasure,--whatsoever things are lovely first, and things that are true and of good report afterwards in their turn,--still there is a pleasure, one of the strangest and strongest in our nature, in imaginative suffering with and for others,-- "In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering;" for sympathy is worth nothing, is, indeed, not itself, unless it has in it somewhat of personal pain. It is the hereafter that gives to "the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still," its own infinite meaning. Our hearts and our understandings follow Ailie and her "ain man" into that world where there is no pain, where no one says, "I am sick." What is all the philosophy of Cicero, the wailing of Catullus, and the gloomy playfulness of Horace's variations on "Let us eat and drink," with its terrific "for," to the simple faith of the carrier and his wife in "I am the resurrection and the Life"? I think I can hear from across the fields of sleep and other years Ailie's sweet, dim, wandering voice trying to say,-- Our bonnie bairn's there, John, She was baith gude and fair, John, And we grudged her sair, John, To the land o' the leal. But sorrow's sel' wears past, John, The joys are comin' fast, John, The joys that aye shall last, John, In the land o' the leal. EDINBURGH, 1861. [Illustration: a cherub] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Portrait, Dr. John Brown . . . . . . . Frontispiece. Rab . . . . . . . . Hermann Simon "He is muzzled!". . . . . Hermann Simon "He lifted down Ailie his wife" . . . Edmund H. Garrett "One look at her quiets the students" . . Edmund H. Garrett "Rab looked perplexed and dangerous" . . Hermann Simon "--And passed away so gently" . . Edmund H. Garrett "Down the hill through Auchindinny woods" Edmund H. Garrett Rab and Jess . . . . . . Hermann Simon RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary Street from the High School, our heads together, and our arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.