O that I had the wings of a dove! for then would I flee away, and be at rest. But it is one thing to flee away, another to find rest. The wings of a dove, it is on record, may carry her away, without her being at rest, without her finding any hold for the sole of her foot. It is possible by flying, to fly away from home and shelter, to be lost in landless space. It is possible by going further to fare worse. It is more than possible to do worse than bear those ills we have, by flying to others that we know not of. Seeking rest, and finding none,—if the quest is common, so is the failure to find. Evil spirit, or not, then saith he, I will return unto my house from whence I came out; even as the dove— symbol of a holy spirit-perforce returned to its asylum within the ark. Seeking rest, and finding none,—the tale is older even than that of Iô, stung by Hêrê's gadfly, and goaded by that fiery sting over hill and valley, across sea and river, to torment her if she lay down to rest, and madden her with pain when she sought to sleep. On and still on she went, resting not by night or day, through the Dorian and Thessalian plains, to the wild Thracian land *—her feet bleeding on the sharp stones, her body torn by the thorns and brambles, as well as tortured by the stings of the fearful gadfly. We might apply what one of the most energetic of Shakspeare's characters is made to say of himself :

"And I,-like one lost in a thorny wood,

That rends the thorns, and is rent with the thorns;
Seeking a way, and straying from the way;

Not knowing how to find the open air,

But toiling desperately to find it out."

So a voice is heard in the Harmonies religieuses to give a pourquoi for the complainer's tossings to and fro of heart and hope, comme un malade dans son lit:

"Pourquoi mon errante pensée,

Comme une colombe blessée,
Ne se repose en aucun lieu."

* See Mr. G. W. Cox's rendering (from Æschylus) of the tale of Iô and Prometheus.

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The Edward Shore of Crabbe's Tales is one who, unfix'd, unfixing, look'd around, and no employment but in seeking found." He loved not labour, though he could not rest, "Nor firmly fix the vacillating mind, that, ever working, could no centre find." For such as him was meant the moral embodied in, and openly attached to, one of Wordsworth's Inscriptions (On the banks of a rocky stream):

"Behold an emblem of our human mind

Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home,
Yet, like to eddying balls of foam

Within this whirlpool, they each other chase
Round and round, and neither find

An outlet nor a resting-place!

Stranger, if such disquietude be thine,

Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine."

In Edward Shore's case, although "faith, with his virtue, he indeed profess'd," there were "doubts that deprived his ardent mind of rest;" and, not adopting the counsel of the bard of Rydal,

"Still the same scruples haunted Edward's mind,

Who found no rest, nor took the means to find."

A companion picture, like in unlikeness, is to be seen in one of the later tales,—that of Rachel, who lived in sorrow and in solitude :

"Religious neighbours, kindly calling, found

Her thoughts unsettled, anxious, and unsound:
Low, superstitious, querulous, and weak,
She sought for rest but knew not how to seek :

And their instructions, though in kindness meant,

Were far from yielding the desired content."

Like neither of these is that seeker in Shelley, who "sought, for his lost heart was tender, things to love, but found them not ""a spirit that strove for truth, and like the Preacher found it not." "Ah me," sighs the Licinius of Chronicles and

Characters,

"What goal to us remains, whose course some Fate
Impels unwilling where no prize can wait

The weary runner?"

And something such is the strain of the Lotos-eaters, weighed upon with heaviness while all things else have rest from wea riness. All things have rest: why should they toil alone, and make perpetual moan, still from one sorrow to another thrown, "Nor ever fold our wings,

And cease from wanderings,

Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm ;

Nor harken what the spirit sings,

'There is no joy but calm '?"

For is there "any peace in ever climbing up the climbing wave?" Sheer misery is that described in the legend of Rabbi Ben Ephraim's Treasure, where we read how

"a fever-famisht human hope

That is doom'd from grief to grief to grope

On darkness blind to a doubtful goal,
Consumes the substance of the soul

In wavering ways about the world."

Nor so very far behind it is the trouble of him that wrought upon his shield, for his device, a fountain springing ever to reach a star, with the legend subscribed, "I shall attain," though, to mock his eyes, his heart replied, "In vain !”—for where that fountain seemed to rise highest, back again was it straightway consigned to earth, and fell in void despair, like the worn knight's "sad seven-years' hope to find Fair Yoland with the yellow hair." Within those seven years, how many lands and climes had he ransacked, and yet he seemed to be, indeed,

"No nearer to the endless quest.
Neither by night nor day I rest;
My heart burns in me like a fire:
My soul is parch'd with long desire :
Ghostlike I grow, and where I go
I hear men mock and mutter low,
And feel men's finger point behind-
'The moonstruck knight that talks to air!
Lord help the fool who hopes to find
Fair Yoland with the yellow hair.'

Cries from the dust. And God is just.
No rock denies the raven food.

6

For who would torture, night by night,
Some starving creature with the sight
Of banquets fair with plenty spread,
Then mock, Crawl empty thou to bed,
And dream of viands not for thee!'
Yet night by night, dear God, to me,
In wake or sleep, such visions creep
To gnaw my heart with hunger deep.
How can I meet dull death, resign'd
To die the fool of dreams so fair?

Nay, love hath seen, and love shall find
Fair Yoland with the yellow hair!"

No observant reader of these rhymes but must have been struck with the rhymer's recurrence to this order of themes, in lingering longing strains, diversified enough in manner and accident, but nearly identical in import. Thus, in a later work, we often light on such passages as this:

"For I know what it is to wander, alas !

It is only to fall from bad to worse,

And find no rest in the universe."

Elsewhere the same poet begins another poem with the reflection,

"The rest that man runs after lures the wretch
From every place where he at rest may be,
So that his legs are ever on the stretch,

And not one moment of repose hath he."

So again where the Tree tells the Man, in the last poem of the series,

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Vainly the world, wherein no root thou hast,

Thou wanderest seeking what, when found, is fled.
And think'st thou I am solitary? Thou

It is who art a wandering solitude.

For from thy life away thy life doth flow,
And, self-pursuing, thou art self-pursued.

The Tree stands steadfast.. by the root he hath.
For whoso hath no root, no life hath he.

No path leads to him. And by every path

He from himself must needs a wanderer be."

But in yet another poem from the same source we may find a passage that, by way of conclusion, may serve to bring us round nearer to our starting-point :

"My heart is a storm-beaten ark, wildly hurl'd

O'er the whirlpools of time, with the wrecks of a world.
The dove from my bosom hath flown far away:

It is flown, and returns not, though many a day
Have I watch'd from the windows of life for its coming.
Friend, I sigh for repose, I am weary of roaming.

I know not what Ararat rises for me,

Far away, o'er the waves of the wandering sea."

A

III.

THE TOWER OF BABEL.

GENESIS xi. 1—9.

RCHBISHOP WHATELY is the alleged author of a Latin tractate, anonymously published in 1849, which freely recognizes as very considerable the difficulties under which this short narrative labours. He asks how the precaution against being scattered abroad was to be secured by building a very high tower; and again how the purpose of it was to be frustrated by a confusion of tongues; and why it was necessary that they should all be dispersed through far-apart regions? His notion of the matter, upon the whole, seems to be that some leading men had determined to found a world-wide empire, with a temple, dedicated to some idol, for world-wide worship; and that since it was not in their power, as dwellers on a plain, to erect that building on a mountain, (as one of the "high places" afterwards so notorious in holy writ,) they resolved on building a very lofty tower, a sort of artificial mountain. Whereupon their counsels were baffled by divine interposition, which moved the founders to discord, causing them to quarrel about religious worship-and thus "much more effectively vitiating their attempt than by a diversity of tongues." "Thus it came to pass at Babel,