d crimson with carnage.

And now had we reached the last sarcophagus, already we were abreast of
the last bas-relief; already we were recovering the arrow-like flight of
the central aisle, when coming up it in counterview to ourselves we
beheld the frailest of cars, built as might seem from floral wreaths,
and from the shells of Indian seas. Half concealed were the fawns that
drew it by the floating mists that went before it in pomp. But the mists
hid not the lovely countenance of the infant girl that sate wistful upon
the ear, and hid not the birds of tropic plumage with which she played.
Face to face she rode forward to meet us, and baby laughter in her eyes
saluted the ruin that approached. 'Oh, baby,' I said in anguish, 'must
we that carry tidings of great joy to every people be God's messengers
of ruin to thee?' In horror I rose at the thought. But then also, in
horror at the thought, rose one that was sculptured in the bas-relief--a
dying trumpeter. Solemnly from the field of Waterloo he rose to his
feet, and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried it in his dying anguish
to his stony lips, sounding once, and yet once again, proclamation that
to _thy_ ears, oh baby, must have spoken from the battlements of death.
Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and shuddering silence. The
choir had ceased to sing; the uproar of our laurelled equipage alarmed
the graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked into
life. By horror we that were so full of life--we men, and our horses
with their fiery forelegs rising in mid-air to their everlasting
gallop--were petrified to a bas-relief. Oh, glacial pageantry of death,
that from end to end of the gorgeous cathedral for a moment froze every
eye by contagion of panic. Then for the third time the trumpet sounded.
Back with the shattering burst came the infinite rushing of life. The
seals of frost were raised from our stifling hearts.

8.--DESIDERIUM.

Here is another variation on a famous passage in the 'Autobiographic
Sketches,' which will give the reader some further opportunity for
comparison:

At six years of age, or thereabouts (I write without any memorial
notes), the glory of this earth for me was extinguished. _It is
finished_--not those words but that sentiment--was the misgiving of my
prophetic heart; thought it was that gnawed like a worm, that did not
and that could not die. 'How, child,' a cynic would have said, if he had
deciphered the secret re