“The love of order—I the thing receive From reverend men, and I in part believe— Shows a clear mind and clean, and whoso needs This love, but seldom in the world succeeds; And yet with this some other love must be, Ere I can fully to the fact agree; Valour and study may by order gain, By order sovereigns hold more steady reign; Through all the tribes of nature order runs, And rules around in systems and in suns: Still has the love of order found a place With all that’s low, degrading, mean, and base, With all that merits scorn, and all that meets disgrace: In the cold miser, of all change afraid, In pompous men in public seats obeyed; In humble placemen, heralds, solemn drones; ... Order to these is armour and defence, And love of method serves in lack of sense.” Exceptions allowed for, as in every rule, yet is the rule sufficiently approved, that order is heaven’s first law. The poet of “The Angel in the House” in style, and spirit, and sentiment, how salient a contrast to Crabbe, utters the conceit (_poeticè_) in one of his tender preludes, that— “Sweet Order has its draught of bliss Graced with the pearl of God’s consent,”— a conceit that allows of wide application, as do many of those of so suggestive a writer. But to conclude. When the judicious Hooker—to call him by his conventional epithet—lay a-dying, he expressed his joy at the near prospect of entering a World of Order. The author of “The Book of the Church” emphasises the import of holy Richard’s “placid and profound contentment,” by reminding us that because he had been employed in ecclesiastical polemics, and because his life had been passed under the perpetual discomfort of domestic discord, the happiness of heaven must have seemed in Hooker’s estimation, to consist primarily in Order, as, indeed, in all human societies this is the first thing needful. _SWEET SLEEP, AND ITS FORFEITURE._ PROVERBS iii. 24. To him that keepeth sound wisdom and instruction is the promise given, not only that he shall walk in his way safely, and his foot shall not stumble,—this for daytime and its activities,—but further, as regards night-time and its contingencies, that when he lies down he shall not be afraid; yea, he shall lie down, and his sleep shall be sweet. So He giveth His beloved sleep, of whom the Psalmist said, “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.” Surely, in order that one may pray with full purpose of heart the prayer, Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his! one should live the life that may warrant the nightly petition, Let me sleep the sleep of the just, and let mine eyes close quietly in slumber even as his. Macbeth, within this minute a murderer, _ipso facto_ realizes the appalling truth, that between him and placid sleep there is, from henceforth and for evermore, a great gulf fixed, as impassable as abysmal.