o doubt it is a matter for serious question," I replied. "For, as soon
as we grow out of our languid and feeble maladies, we grow into the
violent inflammatory disorders which troubled our forefathers. The
doctors will tell you that this is true of our bodies; and surely the
soul's physician may pursue the analogy."

"I can no longer hope to heal any man's soul," exclaimed the clergyman;
"it is enough if my own be not wholly lost. I shall to-morrow formally
resign the sacred office of teacher in this place. With the final
renunciation of the great purpose which once swayed my life, I must
renounce every symbol less profound, less poetic. I must make my boast
of an intellect which will never let any affection pass the line of
demonstrable truth. I once knew how grand it was to stand alone in the
world of an inward faith; but now I have renounced all belief in an
ideal human being inclosed in this poor body whom it was my business to
liberate."

As we stopped at the broad path leading to the parsonage, I ventured to
say a few words which I will not set down.

More and more I was drawn towards the high and intense life of the woman
in whom all that was wrong seemed but an excess of virtue. I could have
besought some fanatical warlike spirit to take possession of Clifton and
make him capable of hate, and so, perhaps, of love. Anything to arouse
this personator of our human mutability, this vacillator between doing
and letting alone!

The wild future of the minister I did not anticipate. Hereafter it may
possibly be written, to show such lessons as it has. But on that autumn
night he walked up the gray pathway a broken man. The spiritual part was
dead; he had lost faith in the invisible. He walked as one in a funeral
procession,--ever doomed to follow a dead idea.

* * * * *

THE UNITED STATES ARMORY.

The United States Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts, is the largest,
best appointed, and altogether the most productive establishment for the
manufacture of small arms in the world,--those belonging to the Austrian
Government at Vienna, and to the British at Enfield, being greatly
inferior both in size and appointments; while the quality of the guns
manufactured here is very superior to that at either of those important
establishments. Indeed, the Springfield rifled musket is justly regarded
as the most perfect arm of its kind which has ever been produced. To
attain this desirable po