beautiful, is the office of a clergyman! How all goodness seems to group itself around it,-poetry, religion, the shepherding of souls. How poor all other callings seem by its side!

Time went on, and father and son grew more and more absorbed in one another-a very peculiar kind of affection had taken the place of the ordinary feelings which subsist between child and parent. It was not only his own lost poet's youth the old man found born again for him in Godfrey, but what was far more precious to him, he found a harmony of religious faith. In earlier times, when a young man went away from home to attend lectures and learn theology, he seldom failed to come back a Titan, a stormer of heaven, a proud iconoclast, denouncing as idle superstition what old men's old faith still humbly adored;and then perhaps their fathers have felt pangs deeper far, if more silent, than ever mother knew. Now, however, things were going better. Godfrey, although of course he had not escaped collision with the conceited scepticism of the common college world, had come home again with the faith of his father and his father's fathers. He had felt the old theology too deeply to be led astray; light he knew, with men as well as plants, is only useful to the upper growth, and is fatal to the roots, and so he had kept his faith sheltered from enlightened interpretation. And so in his son's heart his father found his own beating again with the freshness of youth, and the justification at once of his affection and of the convictions of his life. If it is wretchedness to love when we disapprove, and to turn away with the head, with the heart yearning, how infinitely sweet is it to find oneself and one's own faith planted on into a younger time, and to see life like a cloudless night sky, when no star ever sets but another rises to fill its place.

Heim was a Garden of Eden to Godfrey. He laboured in it as his father's gardener. Wife, sister, brother, daughter, friend, and all that man can love, Godfrey was to him. Each Sunday brought a new pleasure with it, in a new sermon as a tributary offering of the son to the father. Such wonderful, such brilliant power he displayed, that indeed it is to be feared it served more to edify his father than his congregation; and yet he was not altogether wrong when he maintained that higher thoughts than the mind can reach are often of the greatest service to it, and that it is on the steepest crags one learns best to climb. A moist eye, a clasp of the hands, as the old man muttered a rapid prayer, made each fresh Sunday an ascension festival; and in the little silent parsonage was held many a feast of joy the world knew nothing of, and the world would not well, perhaps, understand. And people who think hearing or preaching sermons at best but an insipid pleasure, will find it strange too that two men could entertain themselves over two sermons, the one past and

the one to come, with as much, perhaps more, eagerness than if they were criticizing a play.

To these two happy beings one more as happy had attached her fortunes. Justa, finding herself an orphan, her own mistress, and unencumbered, had disposed of the house and property her father had left her in town, and withdrawn into lodgings into the upper story of the most beautiful of all farm-houses, to live entirely in the country. Entirely; not by halves: whatever Justa did she did entirely, the only fault being that it was not quite regularly. Some things she did more than entirely -all, and something over. And this was particularly the case when it was a sacrifice she was herself called to make. Justa settled at Heim; she saw Godfrey, and those deep, glistening poet's eyes of his, and by the time she had listened out some four or five of his Lent sermons, her heart, all flowing with goodness as it was, she had consigned over to his keeping, with a promise that her hand should follow as soon as circumstances should make it prudent. Justa generally found herself more able to do the difficult than the easy. I wish this was a place to paint the beautiful May life that bloomed under her hands in the little parsonage under the church tower. The mornings when she would flit across from her own little dwelling, to order their day for them; the evenings in the garden with its twelve flower beds, and the bright green watered meadows beyond, and the back-ground of far distant hills, and the stars; the interplay of three hearts, not one of which had ever known a feeling less lovely than this lovely scene, and in whose pure and holy thoughts beauty was the day companion of their lives. The garden was as a church aisle, and the ground was hallowed, and the deep heaven the enamelled roof above their heads.

There is many a valley and many a home where a true Garden of Eden is hiding which we hear nothing of, and have no fancy pictures of set up in our shop-windows. True happiness does not willingly expose her choicest flower to vulgar gaze. In such a poet's fulness of bliss and love, of poetry and religion, of everblowing spring, of the past and the future, Godfrey found himself reposing, that he feared even to speak of the intensity of his happiness, except in prayer. Only in prayer he thought it is permitted to man to say all, to weigh his joys and his sorrows, as it is truly fit they should be weighed. It is only the words spoken in prayer the powers of evil are not allowed to hear.

And the father, how blessed beyond all thought was he! The sun of his life, it might be seen, was sinking fast below the grassy hillock, beneath which his early companion had laid herself down to sleep; but it was going down in a serene and mellow sky; no winter evening, with darkness and chilling frost blast, but a calm crimson sunset of summer.

6

A young man whose heart is really pure is never so readily reminded of the last hours of life as in the most beautiful, the most serenely happy, while the morning star of his life is yet rising in the fresh dewy daybreak of existence with all the fragrance and all the glory of every flower, and joy so strangely blended, breathing and blooming round him. Godfrey was for ever thinking of the time when the morning star would be the star of evening. All is so clear, so certain to me now,' he would say to himself; the brightness and blessedness of life, the great course of the universe. The Creator in his glory, the worth and greatness of the heart, the star forms of eternal truth, the glorious star-sown heaven of ideas that light us, and draw us, and hold us ever upon our path; but a time will come when I shall be old, and the languor of death will lie heavy on me, and how will it be then? May not all this change? So full of life, so breathingly beautiful as it is, may it not grow gray then, and dull and cold? At the hour when man draws near the heaven into which he has been so long gazing, death inverts the telescope before his feeble eye, and the lights go out in dark and hollow vacancy. But is this right? Is this truth? Is my vision clearer when my powers are fresh, or when declining to their end? Shall I feel more truth when I have but half a life to feel and think and hope with !-powerless for every keen glance and warmth of feeling? Or now, when my whole heart is overflowing, and my pulses bounding, and my eye is sure? I am right now, that I know, and I know this at least more surely than I shall know it then. Let not all this be lost to me; let me bear some of this away with me into the evening twilight, for the hour of my soul's need.'

And so in those beautiful May hours when heaven and earth and his heart were keeping time together in one full swelling symphony, he spun his fiery feelings into fiery words, and held them imprisoned by his pen, under the title, Recollections out of the fairest hours for the last.' The most blessed feelings he had known in life should be for the comfort of his soul on his departure; to look back out of the dusky red of evening twilight on the glories of the sunrise. What these Recollections were we shall learn in the sequel of the story. They began, Think in the hour of darkness, how the glory of the universe once swelled in thy breast.' They were to increase with his life; more and more May moments were to be added. One cannot tell,' he thought, how long a comfort one may not need.'

Thus, happily, these three human souls lived on together, and every morning seemed brighter and more beautiful than the last; when the time came that cannon-wheels and the chariots of victory began to roll across the land in the sacred war of freedom, and Godfrey became another being, like a young bird of

passage which has never known a warmer climate, yet beats its cage-wire with its wings in struggles to be free, to follow its kindred in their flight. The power and energy of his nature had lain till now lulled by the voice of his poetry; now it burst all out into life; and the fire of inspiration which hitherto had been blazing idly as out of a naphtha soil into the air, had found and seized its object. Yet he could but fancy his marches and his battles! How could he propose to his father to leave them? Justa only knew what he was feeling; and Justa could not sympathize with him. How could she bear to think of his leaving the old man alone?

Justa had not been thinking of herself. Once Godfrey spoke in a sermon of the blessedness of those to whom it was given to brave the war-storm for their father-land; what high honour the commonest man might win when he laid his grave on the battle field as a foundation for his prince's throne: he painted the leaders in their glory as the highest example to all noble souls; bestowing a future of thousands of happy days for one wound, out of which flowed rivers of water for the gladdening of the nations. Each one who could and dared he urged to enter the hallowed circle, high and low, rich and poor, pale student and old man,-all, all should go;-women join their hands against the inbreak of the dark power of the enemy, and never flinch though pierced through and through; and a thought, as Justa listened, grew up in her young heart, that swept her up above her private love to the great love of father-land, that she should go disguised and risk her life and win a garland for herself, and fill the place her lover would have filled. She could not tell him! never could she hope for his consent: she went to old Hartmann. He too had felt the ardour of old age rekindled in him; when the end was right, the boldest road to it was ever the best with him: he felt all his son and Justa felt-the same love, the same burning enthusiasm. Yet he could not say 'Yes' to her. Godfrey, he said, should go; Godfrey had long been craving-had only stayed from love for him. For at least one year he had strength enough for all his duties; and then he too could feel he was doing something for the father-land.

And so, when after this the old man surprised his son with his leave for him to go, once for all, resigning all the happiness and all the help he might have had from him at home,when Godfrey heard what a heart his Justa had-how like it was to his, what a sacrifice she would have made, and now that she would even sacrifice this sacrifice again, and stay and help his father, and bear to know her lover and not herself to be in danger, perhaps no single beautiful hour ever blended so many lovely and such varied joys and human beings into one. And so Godfrey went. He left his father strong in the

autumn of life, and had no fears for him; he volunteered into the ranks, and when he could he preached as well as fought. A new course of life wakes up new powers, and advances men further on to perfection. Till now he had only been called to speak; to do had not been given him. So when the time came, all the bolder and more zealously, perhaps thoughtlessly, he sought out every post where he could win most distinction. Wounds were not granted to him to which by-and-by in peace he might point as the burning trophies of the glories of his youth; yet it was happiness enough to him to be there fighting with the fighters; to see the great days of the old Republicans come again, to be one of a great people struggling all for a common end; so rare in these days of ours, when where here and there one is found with a soul to make a sacrifice for his country, he has ever to make it alone, without a friend, without even sympathy.

At last came the fair day of spring which Germany had earned by her victories, and more than one nation were keeping the feast of triumph and of jubilee. Such high and solemn times must be kept with those we love; Godfrey must share his happiness with them, in theirs to find his own redoubled. And so he took his way again to Heim. We will go with him the last day of his journey, and see him to the village.

Thousands had travelled the same road before him, thousands travelled it after him, along enfranchised countries out of a happy past into a happy present; yet not perhaps many saw such a pure blue heaven reposing on the mountains over Heim; not one old familiar starlet but was beaming beautifully in its place. Justa had written from time to time to Godfrey with the little news of the parsonage; how she was longing for him back again, and how his father was rejoicing over him where he was; and always watching for the latest news of the war and the exploits of his son; how well the old man had borne the fatigue of his office, the many sermons he had wished to send, and so forth. She had hinted, too, at something brighter than all behind; but that was a secret, and was to wait till he came. It is not impossible that it was a promise she had made herself, that now the grand peace was come she would let Godfrey have the hand which she had spoken of.

These things were all flitting over Godfrey's mind as he walked along; it was the day before Whit-Sunday; they were not expecting him so soon, but he meant to be home before sunset, to save his father the next day's labour, and what a Whitsun feast it should be! He would see them that very day. The hills round the old valley were growing clearer and clearer in the blue wavy sky, under which were beating those dear breasts he was so soon to clasp to his own. They were there;