ng summer? I
saw the brow of Idris clouded; I again felt, that we were enchained to the
car of fate, over whose coursers we had no control. We could no longer say,
This we will do, and this we will leave undone. A mightier power than the
human was at hand to destroy our plans or to achieve the work we avoided.
It were madness to calculate upon another winter. This was our last. The
coming summer was the extreme end of our vista; and, when we arrived there,
instead of a continuation of the long road, a gulph yawned, into which we
must of force be precipitated. The last blessing of humanity was wrested
from us; we might no longer hope. Can the madman, as he clanks his chains,
hope? Can the wretch, led to the scaffold, who when he lays his head on the
block, marks the double shadow of himself and the executioner, whose
uplifted arm bears the axe, hope? Can the ship-wrecked mariner, who spent
with swimming, hears close behind the splashing waters divided by a shark
which pursues him through the Atlantic, hope? Such hope as theirs, we also
may entertain!

Old fable tells us, that this gentle spirit sprung from the box of Pandora,
else crammed with evils; but these were unseen and null, while all admired
the inspiriting loveliness of young Hope; each man's heart became her home;
she was enthroned sovereign of our lives, here and here-after; she was
deified and worshipped, declared incorruptible and everlasting. But like
all other gifts of the Creator to Man, she is mortal; her life has attained
its last hour. We have watched over her; nursed her flickering existence;
now she has fallen at once from youth to decrepitude, from health to
immedicinable disease; even as we spend ourselves in struggles for her
recovery, she dies; to all nations the voice goes forth, Hope is dead! We
are but mourners in the funeral train, and what immortal essence or
perishable creation will refuse to make one in the sad procession that
attends to its grave the dead comforter of humanity?

Does not the sun call in his light? and day
Like a thin exhalation melt away--
Both wrapping up their beams in clouds to be
Themselves close mourners at this obsequie.[3]

[1] Wordsworth.
[2] Prior's "Solomon."
[3] Cleveland's Poems.

VOL. III.

CHAPTER I.

HEAR YOU not the rushing sound of the coming tempest? Do you not behold the
clouds open, and destruction lurid and dire pour down on the blasted earth?
See you not the thunderbolt