“The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled in mazes, and perplexed with errors: Our understanding traces them in vain, Lost and bewildered in the fruitless search; Nor sees with how much art the windings run, Nor where the regular confusion ends.” It was at a time of national and household tribulation, when darkness that might be felt seemed to encompass altar and hearth, that Joseph de Maistre wrote to a friend in trouble: “Be it enough for us to know, that for everything there is a reason with which we shall one day become acquainted; let us not weary ourselves with seeking out the why and the wherefore, even when possibly they might be discerned.” He would have his correspondent bear in mind that the epithet “very good” is a necessary adjunct to “very great;” and that is sufficient. The inference is self-evident, that under the sway of the Being who combines in himself those two qualities—the _très-bon_ and the _très-grand_—all the evils we either suffer or witness must needs be acts of justice or means of reformation equally indispensable. In the declared love of God to man, M. de Maistre found a general solution of all the enigmas that can offend (_scandaliser_, in the New Testament sense of putting a stumbling-block in the way of) our ignorance. “Fixed to one little point of time and space, we are insane enough to refer all to this point; and in so doing we are at once blameworthy and absurd.” If De Maistre’s collation of the _très-bon_ with the _très-grand_ resembles the lines of Drummond’s hymn beginning, “O King, whose greatness none can comprehend, Whose boundless goodness doth to all extend,” so is the scope of his argument at one with what follows: “Here, where, as in a mirror, we but see Shadows of shadows, atoms of Thy might, Still owly-eyed when staring on Thy light.” What we call this life of men on earth, as Mr. Browning’s island-poet has it, is, as he finds much reason to conceive, “Intended to be viewed eventually As a great whole, not analysed to parts, But each part having reference to all.”[26] Pope’s well-worked line is of perpetual application, “’Tis but a part we see, and not the whole.” So is the avowal of the present laureate: “I see in part That all, as in some work of art, Is toil co-operant to an end.”