noticed as the charm of his poetry; and the note
differential, in fact. At least, I know not of any former poet who has
so systematically sought his sadness in the very luxury of joy. Thus, in
the 'Two April Mornings,' 'what a mortal freshness of dewy radiance!
what an attraction of early summer! what a vision of roses in June! Yet
it is all transmuted to a purpose of sadness.'

Ah, reader, scorn not that which--whether you refuse it or not as the
reality of realities--is assuredly the reality of dreams, linking us to
a far vaster cycle, in which the love and the languishing, the ruin and
the horror, of this world are but moments--but elements in an eternal
circle. The cycle stretches from an East that is forgotten to a West
that is but conjectured. The mere fact of your own individual calamity
is a life; the tragedy is a nature; the hope is but as a dim augury
written on a flower.[5]

If the things that have fretted us had not some art for retiring into
secret oblivion, what a hell would life become! Now, understand how in
some nervous derangements this horror really takes place. Some things
that had sunk into utter forgetfulness, others that had faded into
visionary power, all rise as gray phantoms from the dust; the field of
our earthly combats that should by rights have settled into peace, is
all alive with hosts of resurrections--cavalries that sweep in gusty
charges--columns that thunder from afar--arms gleaming through clouds of
sulphur.

God takes care for the religion of little children wheresoever His
Christianity exists. Wheresoever there is a national Church established,
to which a child sees all his protectors resort; wheresoever he beholds
amongst earthly creatures whom most he honours prostrate in devotion
before these illimitable heavens, which fill to overflowing the total
capacities of his young adoring heart; wheresoever at intervals he
beholds the sleep of death, falling upon the men or women whom he has
seen--a depth stretching as far below his power to fathom as those
persons ascend beyond his powers to pursue--God speaks to their hearts
by dreams and their tumultuous grandeurs. Even by solitude does God
speak to little children, when made vocal by the services of
Christianity, as also he does by darkness wheresoever it is peopled
with visions of His almighty power. For a pagan child, for a Greek
child, solitude was nothing; for a Christian child it is made the power
of God, and the hiero