them, they have heard by the hearing of the ear, -their eyes have not seen.-F. C., Letter 84.

151. THE BELls of Cluse.-I had been, for six months in Italy, never for a single moment quit of liability to interruption of thought. By day or night, whenever I was awake, in the streets of every city, there were entirely monstrous and inhuman noises in perpetual recurrence. The violent rattle of carriages, driven habitually in brutal and senseless haste, or creaking and thundering under loads too great for their cattle, urged on by perpetual roars and shouts: wild bellowing and howling of obscene wretches far into the night clashing of church bells, in the morning, dashed into reckless discord, from twenty towers at once, as if rung by devils to defy and destroy the quiet of God's sky, and mock the laws of His harmony: filthy, stridulous shrieks and squeaks, reaching for miles into the quiet air, from the railroad stations at every gate and the vociferation, endless, and frantic, of a passing populace whose every word was in mean passion, or in unclean jest. Living in the midst of this, and of vulgar sights more horrible than the sounds, for six months, I found myself --suddenly, as in a dream-walking again alone through the valley of Cluse, unchanged since I knew it first, when I was a boy of fifteen, quite forty years ago;-and in perfect quiet,

and with the priceless completion of quiet, that I was without fear of any outcry or base disturbance of it.

But presently, as I walked, the calm was deepened, instead of interrupted, by a murmurfirst low, as of bees, and then rising into distinct harmonious chime of deep bells, ringing in true cadences-but I could not tell where. The cliffs on each side of the valley of Cluse vary from 1,500 to above 2,000 feet in height; and, without absolutely echoing the chime, they so accepted, prolonged, and diffused it, that at first I thought it came from a village high up and far away among the hills; then presently it came down to me as if from above the cliff under which I was walking; then I turned about and stood still, wondering; for the whole valley was filled with the sweet sound, entirely without local or conceivable origin and only after some twenty minutes' walk, the depth of tones, gradually increasing, showed me that they came from the tower of Maglans in front of me; but when I actually got into the village, the cliffs on the other side so took up the ringing, that I again thought for some moments I was wrong.

Perfectly beautiful, all the while, the sound, and exquisitely varied,-from ancient bells of perfect tone and series, rung with decent and joyful art.

"What are the bells ringing so to-day for,

it is no fête?" I asked of a woman who stood

watching at a garden gate.

"For a baptism, sir."

And so I went on, and heard them fading back, and lost among the same bewildering answers of the mountain air.-Deuc., I. v., § 7, 8.

V.

RELIGION.

152. THE STAGES OF FAITH.-No line of modern poetry has been oftener quoted with thoughtless acceptance than Wordsworth's:

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."

It is wholly untrue in the implied limitation; if life be led under heaven's law, the sense of heaven's nearness only deepens with advancing years, and is assured in death. But the saying is indeed true thus far, that in the dawn of virtuous life every enthusiasm and every perception may be trusted as of divine appointment; and the maxima reverentia is due not only to the innocence of children, but to their inspiration.

And it follows that through the ordinary course of mortal failure and misfortune, in the career of nations no less than of men, the error of their intellect, and the hardening of their hearts, may be accurately measured by their denial of spiritual power.

In the life of Scott, beyond comparison the

greatest intellectual force manifested in Europe since Shakespere, the lesson is given us with a clearness as sharp as the incision on a Greek vase. The very first mental effort for which he obtained praise was the passionate recitation of the passage in the "Eneid," in which the ghost of Hector appears to Eneas. And the deadliest sign of his own approaching death is in the form of incredulity which dictated to his weary hand the "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft."

Here, for the present, I must leave the subject to your own thought,-only desiring you to notice, for general guidance, the gradations of impression on the feelings of men of strong and well-rounded intellect, by which fancy rises towards faith.

I. The lowest stage is that of wilfully grotesque fancy, which is recognised as false, yet dwelt upon with delight and finished with accuracy, as the symbol or parable of what is true.

Shakespere's Puck, and the Dwarf Goblin of the "Lay," are precisely alike in this first level of the imagination. Shakespere does not believe in Bottom's translation; neither does Scott that, when the boy Buccleugh passes the drawbridge, with the dwarf, the sentinel only saw a terrier and lurcher passing out. Yet both of them permit the fallacy, because they acknowledge the Elfin power in nature, to make things, sometimes for good, sometimes for harm, seem what they are not.