The sympathies of life are widening and increasing. Societies are constantly arising devoting themselves to the solacing of human misery; eager sympathies are evinced by different countries in the sufferings of distant lands; ready and substantial aid is gladly tendered in cases of pestilence and famine; and religious intolerance and bigotry are raving themselves to rest. Christ is more and creeds are less than of old. The fact that a free government is now in successful operation, in which (when one false element, slavery, shall be forever eliminated) the voluntary annexation of new states and new countries would be but new ties of strength, with the consentaneous and related facts above quoted, tend to prove that humanity is entering upon a new era; that it is not destined to trail its passionate and quivering wings much longer through the mire of mere materialism; but that newer and higher life is spreading _simultaneously_ through all its members; that the elevating love of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, is hourly penetrating it more deeply; that after its intellect shall have been trained by the sciences--its force increased by industry, commerce, and statesmanship--its inmost heart will be developed by the Charities, now, as with the subtile Greeks, _one_ with the Graces--the arts for the manifestation of the Beautiful. Everything tends to prove, even the wars now waging for national entities, that the human race is approaching that _promised_ phase of civilization, in which _all_ the elements are to combine in glorious _unity_, sound in witching harmony, and men, full of love to God and man, are to become living stones in the vast temple of the redeemed, _one_ through the loving heart of the Brother who died for them all; _one_ through Him with the Infinite God, since in Him finite and Infinite are forever _one_! A few words in the cause of those in advance of their times, and we attain the close of our first volume. It is a startling fact, in the history of humanity, that the benefactors of the race have always been its martyrs and victims; dyeing every glorious gift which they have won for their brethren in the royal purple of the kingly blood of their own hearts. Is this, brethren, to last forever? Shall we never requite the dauntless Columbus, in the wide sea of Beauty? Of all men living, the artist most requires the boon of sympathy. The most susceptible of them all, the musician, plunging into the unseen depths of the time-ocean to wrestle for his gems, feels his heart die within him, when he sees his fellow men turn coldly away from the pure and priceless pearls which he has won for them from the stormy waves and whirlpools of chaotic and compassless sound.