sciences that have grown to such vast proportions, and tell us so fully and so accurately of the methods of being, but leave us as much in the dark as ever concerning its secret; I have drank deep at the fountains of ancient learning; I have studied all literatures and looked long and earnestly into the soul of man in the revelation of books. In a word, I have traversed the whole world of knowledge, and now, at the summit of my years, with such rewards as the reverence of all men can give me, I return to the point whence I set out. The universe still sweeps beyond me vaster and remoter for all my struggle to master it, the illimitable abysses are more awful because I have looked into them, the mystery of life is more insoluble because I have striven to pierce it. I have simply learned to live my own personal life with fortitude, patience, and trust.

"In my youth I came upon this little book, and was deeply moved by the disclosure of a suffering soul I found in it, by its unforced and unstudied depth of feeling, by the intensity of its humanity, by its agony, its love, and its faith. I learned it

almost by heart, and then I passed on into studies and speculations which seemed to dwarf it by their vastness. But I come back again to the goal from which I set out, to the guide who first opened the depths of my life, and who, through his own suffering, found the pathway into the heart of the mystery which I have missed in all my searching. When I remember how earnestly men have striven to think their way into the secrets of the universe, and how certainly they have failed, I see clearly that only he who lives into truth finds it, and that love alone is immortal."

Here the writing ended, and Norton felt himself in the presence of a mind as great and as sincere as his own. He replaced the loose sheets in the volume and laid the little book in its place; in his joy that any impulse from his own heart had touched and inspired another across the gulf of years he had found the true immortality. The fire had burned out, and as he bent over it to find some live coal among the ashes, the little clock on the mantel chimed two, and with a start he found himself in his own study.

E have been sitting tonight before a fire of driftwood, and, as the many-coloured flames have shot up, flickered, and gone

noctes am

out, thought has made all manner of vagrant journeyings. Rosalind has occasionally commented on some splendid tongue of fire, but for the most part we have been silent. There are nights brosiane when inspiring talk, that nectar of the gods, has held us long and made us reluctant to cover the smouldering embers. There are other nights when we fall under some spell of silence, and the world without us stirs into strange vividness the world within, and the chief importance of things visible and tangible seems to be their power to loosen thought