starving beggar standing outside the window and watching each morsel they ate with famished eyes. Perhaps. there are some who would enjoy their dinner all the better; and to that class would belong (if indeed he be not a pure, dense, unmitigated, unimprovable blockhead, who did not understand or feel the force of what he said) that man who lately preached a sermon in which he stated that a great part of the happiness of heaven would consist in looking down complacently on the torments of hell, and enjoying the contrast! What an idea must that man have had of the vile, heartless selfishness of a soul in bliss! No. For myself, though holding humbly all that the Church believes and the Bible teaches, I say that if there be a mystery hard of explanation, it is how the happy spirit can be happy even There, though missing from its side those who in this life were dearest. You remember the sublime prayer of Aquinasa prayer for Satan himself. You remember the gush of kindliness which made Burns express a like sorrow even for the dark Father of Evil: I'm wae to think upon your den, Even for your sake!' No. The day may come when it will not grieve us to contemplate misery which is intolerable and irremediable; but this will be because we shall then have gained such clear and right views of all things, that we shall see things as they appear to God, and then doubtless see that all He does is right. But we may be well assured that it will not be the selfish satisfaction of contrasting our own happiness with that misery which will enable us to contemplate it with complacency: it will be a humble submission of our own will to the One Will that is always wise and right. Yet you remember, reader, how one of the profoundest and acutest of living theologians is fain to have recourse, in the case of this saddest of all sad

thoughts, to the same relief which I have counselled for life's little worries -oh how little when we think of this! Archbishop Whately, in treating of this great difficulty, suggests the idea that in a higher state the soul may have the power of as decidedly turning the thoughts away from a painful subject as we now have of turning the eyes away from a disagreeable sight.

I thought of these things this afternoon in a gay and stirring scene. It was a frozen lake of considerable extent, lying in a beautiful valley, at the foot of a majestic hill. The lake was covered with people, all in a state of high enjoyment: scores of skaters were flying about, and there was a roaring of curling-stones like the distant thunder that was heard by Rip van Winkle. The sky was blue and sunshiny; the air crisp and clear; the cliffs, slopes, and fields around were fair with untrodden snow; but still one could not quite exclude the recollection that this brisk frost, so bracing and exhilarating to us, is the cause of great suffering to multitudes. The frost causes most outdoor work to cease. No building, no fieldwork, can go forward, and so the frost cuts off the bread from many hungry mouths; and fireless rooms and thin garments are no defence against this bitter chill. Well, you would never be cheerful at all but for the blessed gift of occasional forgetfulness! Those who have seen things too accurately as they are, have always been sorrowful even when unsoured men. Here, you man (one of six or seven eager parties with chairs and gimlets), put on my skates. Don't bore that hole in the heel of the boot too deep; you may penetrate to something more sensitive than leather. Screw in; buckle the straps, but not too tight: and now we are on our feet,

with the delightful sense of freedom to fly about in any direction with almost the smooth swiftness of a bird. Come, my friend, let us be off round the lake, with long strokes, steadily, and not too fast. We may not be quite like Sidney's Arcadian shepherd-boy, piping as if he never would grow old; yet let us be like kindly skaters, forgetting, in the exhilarating exercise that quickens the pulse and flushes the cheek, that there are such things as evil and worry in this world!

CHAPTER V.

CONCERNING GIVING UP AND COMING DOWN.

OT so very much depends upon a beginning after all. The inexperienced writer racks his brain for something striking to set out with. He is anxious to make a good impression at first. He fancies that unless you hook your reader by your first sentence, your reader will break away; making up his mind that what you have got to say is not worth the reading. Now it cannot be doubted that a preacher, who is desirous of keeping his congregation in that dead silence and fixedness of attention which one sometimes sees in church, must, as a general rule, produce that audible hush by his first sentence if he is to produce it at all. If people in church are permitted for even one minute at the beginning of the sermon to settle themselves, bodily and mentally, into the attitude of inattention, and of thinking of something other than the preacher's words the preacher will hardly catch them up again. He will hardly, by any amount of earnestness, eloquence, pointedness, or oddity, gain that universal and sympathetic interest of which he flung away his chance by some long, involved, indirect, and dull sentence at starting. But the writer is not tried by so exacting a standard. Most readers will glance over the first few pages of a book before throwing it aside as stupid. The writer may

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overcome the evil effect of a first sentence, or even a first paragraph, which may have been awkward, ugly, dull - yea silly. I could name several very popular works which set out in a most unpromising way. I particularly dislike the first sentence of Adam Bede, but it is redeemed by hundreds of noble ones. It is not certain that the express train which is to devour the four hundred miles between London and Edinburgh in ten hours, shall run its first hundred yards much faster than the lagging parliamentary. There can be no question that the man whom all first visitants of the House of Commons are most eager to see and hear is Mr. Disraeli. He is the lord of debate; not unrivalled perhaps, but certainly unsurpassed. Yet everybody knows he made a very poor beginning. In short, my reader, if something that is really good is to follow, a bad outset may be excused.

One readily believes what one wishes to believe; and I wish to hold by this principle. For I have accumulated many thoughts Concerning Giving Up and Coming Down; and I have got them lying upon this table, noted down on six long slips of paper. I vainly fancy that I have certain true and useful things to say; but I have experienced extraordinary difficulty in deciding how I should begin to say them. I have sat this morning by the fireside for an hour, looking intently at the glowing coals; but though I could think of many things to say about the middle of my essay, I could think of nothing satisfactory with which to begin it. But comfort came as the thought gradually developed itself, that it really mattered very little how the essay might be begun, provided it went on; and, above all, ended. A dull beginning will probably be excused to the essayist more readily than to the writer whose sole purpose is to amuse. The essayist