dreams, and that he is heir, not only of the centuries, but of eternity. Such days belong to the mountains; and when I opened my window on this morning, I was in no doubt as to the invitation held forth by earth and sky. There was exhilaration in the very thought of the long climb, and at an early hour I was fast leaving the village behind me. The road skirted the base of the mountain, and struck at once into the heart of the wilderness, which the clustering peaks have preserved from any but the most fleeting associations with the peopled world around. A barrier of ancient silence and solitude soon separated me even in thought from the familiar scenes I had left. A virginal beauty rested upon the road, and sank deep into my own heart as I passed along; to be silent and open-minded was enough to bring one into fellowship with the hour and the scene. The clear, bracing air, the rustling of leaves slowly sifting down through the lower branches, the solemn quietude, filled the morning with a deep joy that touched the very sources of life, and made them sweet in every thought and emotion. It was like a new beginning in the old, old story of time; the stains of ancient wrong, the blights of sorrow, the wrecks of hope, were gone; sweet with the untrodden freshness of a new day lay the earth, and looked up to the heavens with a gaze as pure and calm as their own. Somehow all life seemed sublimated in that golden sunshine; the grosser elements had vanished, the material had become the transparent medium of the spiritual, the discords had blended into harmony, and one would have heard without surprise the faint, far song of the stars. The whole world was one vast articulate poem, and human life added its own strain of penetrating sweetness. At last, after all these years of struggle and failure, one was really living!