o others. If there be a divine of passion for which it is noble to
suffer and sacrifice, there is also a deeper divine of duty, far
transcending the other both in sacrifice and in reward. To this divine,
too often obscured to all of us, her later life increasingly renders
homage; and to its gentle redemption, our loving, pitying hearts--the
more loving, the more pitying for her story--are glad to leave her.

Ave, thou long laborious! Ave, thou worker of wonders, thou embalmer of
things most fleeting, most precious, so sealed in thy amber,

"That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!"

Thou hast wrought many a picture of wild and guilty passion,--yet
methinks thou didst always paint the mean as mean, the generous as
generous. Nobler stories, too, thou hast told, and thy Consuelo is as
pure as holy charity and lofty art could make her. They complain, that,
in the world of thy creations, women are sublime and men weak; may not
these things, then, be seen and judged for once through woman's eyes?
Much harm hast thou done? Nay, that can only God know. They misquote
thee, who veil a life of low intrigue with high-flown _dicta_ borrowed
from thy works. Thou art not of their sort,--or, if it be indeed _thee_
they seek to imitate,

"Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile."

Thy faults have attracted them, not the virtues that redeem them. Shake
thyself free of such, and with those who have loved much, and to whom
much has been forgiven, go in peace! The shades of the Poets will greet
thee as they greeted Dante and Virgil, when, thyself a shade, thou goest
towards them. The heart that fainted at Francesca's sorrows will not
refuse a throb to thine. For there is a gallery of great women, great
with and without sin, where thou must sit, between Sappho and Cleopatra,
the Magdalen thy neighbor,--nor yet removed wholly out of sight the
Mother of the Great Forgiveness of God.

* * * * *

HAIR-CHAINS.

It was really a magnificent ball! The host had determined that his
entertainment should minister to all the senses of his guests, and had
succeeded so well that there was only room to regret there were but five
senses to be gratified. Only five gates in the fortified wall within
which the shy soul intrenches itself, where an attack may be made. And
even when these are all carried by storm, there are sometimes inner
citadels, impregnable to the magic torrent streaming through the
Beautiful