'Our life is a false nature--'tis not in The harmony of things,--this hard decree, This uneradicable taint of sin, This boundless Upas, this all blasting tree. Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew-- Disease--death--bondage--all the woes we see-- And worse--the woes we see not--which throb through The immedicable soul, with heartaches ever new.' Again: 'What is the worst? Nay, do not ask-- In pity from the search forbear: Smile on--nor venture to unmask Man's heart, and view the hell that's there!' Merciful God! how men suffer when they fly from Thee. When they refuse to listen to the sublime voice implanted within, which calls them to Thee, forever reminding them that they were made for things infinite, eternal! O ye men of pleasure, it is the very greatness of your nature which torments you: there is nothing save God capable of filling the immeasurable depths of your longing! How different the language of Klopstock, as already quoted: 'What recompense could I ask? I have tasted the cup of angels in singing of my Redeemer!' One of the most dangerous, yet most brilliant among the novelists of the present day, says: 'Properly speaking, love is not a violent aspiration of every faculty toward a created being; it is rather a holy thirst of the most ethereal part of our being for the unknown. Tormented with intuitions of an eternal love, filled with torturing and insatiate desires for the infinite, we vainly seek their gratification in the dying forms which surround us, and obstinately adorn our perishable idols with that immaterial beauty which haunts our dreams. The emotions of the senses do not suffice us; in the treasure house of the simple joys of nature there is nothing sufficiently exquisite to fill our high demands; we would fain grasp heaven, and it is not within our reach. Then we seek it in a creature fallible as ourselves; we expend upon it all the high energies given us for far nobler ends. We refuse to worship God, and kneel before a worm like ourselves! But when the veil falls, when we see behind the clouds of incense and the halos woven by love, only a miserable and imperfect creature--we blush for our delusion, overturn our idol in our despair, and trample it rudely under foot. But as we must love, and will not give our hearts to God, for whom they were created, we seek another idol--and are again deceived! Through this bitter, bitter school we are purified and enlightened, until, abandoning all hope of finding perfection on earth, we are at last ready to offer God that pure, but now broken-hearted worship, which should never have been given save to Him alone.'--GEORGE SAND. Thus is it that 'love's best interpreter is still a sigh.'