sing. His pause attracted the notice of
one of the unhappy beings whom we suffer to pollute our streets and rot
in our hospitals. She approached and spoke to him,--to him whose heart
was so full of Helen! He shuddered, and strode on. At length he paused
before the twin towers of Westminster Abbey, on which the moon rested in
solemn splendour; and in that space one man only shared his solitude. A
figure with folded arms leaned against the iron rails near the statue
of Canning, and his gaze comprehended in one view the walls of the
Parliament, in which all passions wage their war, and the glorious
abbey, which gives a Walhalla to the great. The utter stillness of the
figure, so in unison with the stillness of the scene, had upon Percival
more effect than would have been produced by the most clamorous crowd.
He looked round curiously as he passed, and uttered an exclamation as he
recognized John Ardworth.

"You, Percival!" said Ardworth. "A strange meeting-place at this hour!
What can bring you hither?"

"Only whim, I fear; and you?" as Percival linked his arm into
Ardworth's.

"Twenty years hence I will tell you what brought me hither!" answered
Ardworth, moving slowly back towards Whitehall.

"If we are alive then!"

"We live till our destinies below are fulfilled; till our uses have
passed from us in this sphere, and rise to benefit another. For the soul
is as a sun, but with this noble distinction,--the sun is confined
in its career; day after day it visits the same lands, gilds the same
planets or rather, as the astronomers hold, stands, the motionless
centre of moving worlds. But the soul, when it sinks into seeming
darkness and the deep, rises to new destinies, fresh regions unvisited
before. What we call Eternity, may be but an endless series of those
transitions which men call 'deaths,' abandonments of home after home,
ever to fairer scenes and loftier heights. Age after age, the spirit,
that glorious Nomad, may shift its tent, fated not to rest in the
dull Elysium of the Heathen, but carrying with it evermore its
elements,--Activity and Desire. Why should the soul ever repose? God,
its Principle, reposes never. While we speak, new worlds are sparkling
forth, suns are throwing off their nebulae, nebulae are hardening into
worlds. The Almighty proves his existence by creating. Think you that
Plato is at rest, and Shakspeare only basking on a sun-cloud? Labour is
the very essence of spirit, as of divinity; lab