terial age has
banished it from the earth?

No indeed it is not dead, the ideal love, but indwells, a redeeming
power, wherever there are desolate hearts and minds to be updrawn and
united by its ministry; a power so lustral in its nature, that no abject
and despairing thought creeps into its presence but is purified and
exalted by its regard. This love brings hope and cheerful constancy;
with a shining falchion it affrights into their natal darkness the
monstrous forms of despair, and lends to all work a secret charm of
chivalry. It sustains that high anticipatory mood to which life is but a
preparation, and the bees buzzing round the honey-flowers seem poor
things toiling for an inessential gain. Because it is mystic and
transcendental it is the predestined guide of all whom fate holds
removed from earthly love. This is the old device of the world's
failures, you say, to trick themselves out in Plato's mantle or the
schoolman's cowl, and conceal their spite beneath the pretensions of the
mystic. But I answer that the causes which moved the Greek and the
Florentine are still at work among mankind to-day; they have never
ceased, however much obscured by the glare of triumphant luxury or the
stress of miserable toil. Often when disillusion has laid bare a soul,
this love which did but slumber awakes to contest with envy or despair
the possession of a wounded heart. I aver that any exile from the
happier earth whose heart is pure, if he invokes this love with ardent
faith, may unbar his door and feel that it has passed his threshold.
Let us never be persuaded that the ideal world is far from this earth of
ours, or that the way to it may not be daily traversed by him who has
submitted to the heavenly guide. Not even the close entanglement of
common cares can avail to keep such an one from his love; but as Bishop
Berkeley is said to have been able to pass in a moment from the
consideration of trifling things to the throne of thrones and the seats
of the Trinity, so this lover shall overpass with easy and habitual
flight the barriers that hold most men life-long prisoners.

For to the Spirit that is chastened and endures there is given a power
of flight and poise, by which, if it abandon itself to the celestial
wind, it may instantly remove from the deeper planes of life, as a bird
by the mere slanting of its wings is carried in proud quiescence into an
upper region of the air. He shall know instant release from the leaguer