that the human race is approaching
that _promised_ phase of civilization, in which _all_ the elements are
to combine in glorious _unity_, sound in witching harmony, and men, full
of love to God and man, are to become living stones in the vast temple
of the redeemed, _one_ through the loving heart of the Brother who died
for them all; _one_ through Him with the Infinite God, since in Him
finite and Infinite are forever _one_!

A few words in the cause of those in advance of their times, and we
attain the close of our first volume.

It is a startling fact, in the history of humanity, that the benefactors
of the race have always been its martyrs and victims; dyeing every
glorious gift which they have won for their brethren in the royal purple
of the kingly blood of their own hearts. Is this, brethren, to last
forever? Shall we never requite the dauntless Columbus, in the wide sea
of Beauty? Of all men living, the artist most requires the boon of
sympathy. The most susceptible of them all, the musician, plunging into
the unseen depths of the time-ocean to wrestle for his gems, feels his
heart die within him, when he sees his fellow men turn coldly away from
the pure and priceless pearls which he has won for them from the stormy
waves and whirlpools of chaotic and compassless sound.

As the artists must be considered as the standard-bearers of that
blissful banner of progress to be effected through the culture of the
_sympathies_ of the race, unrolling that great Oriflamme of humanity, on
which bloom the Heavenly Lilies of that chaste Passion of the Soul--_the
longing for the infinite_--let us acknowledge that we have failed to
render happy the great spirits no longer among us; and let us strive,
for the future, not to chill with our mistrust and coldness, not to
drive into the sickness of despair with our want of intelligent
sympathy, the gifted living, who, as angels of a better covenant, still
lovingly linger among us! Let us strive to learn the lesson set before
us with such tenderness in the following eloquent words of Ruskin,
fitting close as they are to the many which we have already collated and
combined with our work from his glowing pages.

'He who has once stood beside the grave to look back upon the
companionship now forever closed, feeling how impotent _there_ are
the wild love and keen sorrow to give one moment's pleasure to the
pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the depa