Struggle and anguish have their place in every genuine life, but they are the stages through which it advances to a strength which is full of repose. The bursting of the calyx announces the flower; but the beauty of the perfect blossoming obliterated the very memory of its earlier growth. The climb upward is often a long anguish, but the dust and weariness are forgotten when once the eye rests on the vast outlook. "On every height there lies repose" is the sublime declaration of one who had looked into most things deeper than his fellows, and had learned much of the profounder processes of life. Emerson long ago noted that even in action the forms of the Greek heroes are always in repose; the crudity of passion, the distorting agony of half-mastered purpose, are lost in a self-forgetfulness which borrows from Olympus something of the repose of the gods. The sublime calm which imparts to great works of art a hint of eternity is born of complete mastery of life; all the stages of evolution have been accomplished, the whole movement of growth has been fulfilled, before the hand of art sets the seal of perfection on the thing that is done. Shadow and light, heat and cold, tempest and quiet days, have all wrought together before the blooming of the flower which in its perfect grace and beauty gives no hint of its troubled growth. As the consummation of all toil and struggle and anguish, there comes at last that deep repose, born not of idleness and indifference, but of the harmony of all the elements in their last and finest form. In the unbroken silence of the noon-tide such thoughts come unbidden and almost unnoticed to one who surrenders himself to the hour and the scene. Nature has her tempests, but her harvests are gathered amid the calm of days that often seem filled with the peace of heaven, and the mighty and irresistible movement of her life goes on in unbroken silence. The deepest thoughts are always tranquillising, the greatest minds are always full of calm, the richest lives have always at heart an unshaken repose. Chapter XVIII Eventide