h, or does a something more come down to it out of heaven, and
strike into it substance and reality? This figure of human dreams has
grown and grown in stature: does anything divine descend to it, and so
much as touch its lips or its lifted hands? If so, it is but the work of
a moment. The contact is complete. Life, and truth, and force, like an
electric current, pass into the whole frame. It lives, it moves, it
breathes: it has a body and a being: the divine and the eternal is
indeed dwelling amongst us. And thus, though mature knowledge may seem,
as it still widens, to deepen the night around us; though the universe
yawn wider on all sides of us, in vaster depths, in more unfathomable,
soulless gulfs; though the roar of the loom of time grow more audible
and more deafening in our ears--yet through the night and through the
darkness the divine light of our lives will only burn the clearer: and
this speck of a world as it moves through the blank immensity will bear
the light of all the worlds upon its bosom.

Thinkers like Mr. Leslie Stephen say that such beliefs as these belong
to dreamland; and they are welcome if they please to keep their names.
Their terminology at least has this merit, that it recognises the
dualism of the two orders of things it deals with. Let them keep their
names if they will; and in their language the case amounts to this--that
it is only for the sake of the dreams that visit it that the world of
reality has any certain value for us. Will not the dreams continue, when
the reality has passed away?

G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS have in preparation a series of volumes, to be
issued under the title of

CURRENT DISCUSSION,

A COLLECTION FROM THE CHIEF ENGLISH ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS
OF THE TIME.

The series will be edited by Edward L. Burlingame, and is
designed to bring together, for the convenience of readers and for a
lasting place in the library, those important and representative papers
from recent English periodicals, which may fairly be said to form the
best history of the thought and investigation of the last few years. It
is characteristic of recent thought and science, that a much larger
proportion than ever before of their most important work has appeared in
the form of contributions to reviews and magazines; the thinkers of the
day submitting their results at once to the great public, which is
easiest reached in this way, and holding their discussions before a
large audience, rather than