the increase in the world, but theology is declining.

[Footnote C: The words he uses are,--"To the memory of my mother I
_consecrate_ this volume."]

Mr. Buckle characterized as the sublimest passage in Shakspeare the
lines in the "Merchant of Venice,"--

"Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherabims:
Such harmony is in immortal souls!
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

Mr. Thayer suggested the similarity between the closing part of this
passage, about our deafness to the music of the stars, owing to the
"muddy vesture," and the sonnet of Blanco White which speaks of the
starry splendors to which our eyes are blinded by the light of day:--

"Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we, then, shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?"

Mr. Buckle seemed to be struck by the comparison. He proceeded to speak
of Blanco White's memoirs as painfully interesting, and said that he
had always liked Archbishop Whately for adhering to White after the
desertion of the latter by old friends on account of his change of
belief.

* * * * *

The next few days were occupied in preparations for the voyage up the
Nile in company with my New York friends. Mr. Buckle had very kindly
taken great interest in our plans, and had earnestly advised me to go.
"You will do very wrong indeed," he said, "if you do not go." On the
19th of February we embarked; and as we saluted his boat, lying just
below us in the Nile, while our own shoved off, I little thought that I
should never see him again,--that his brilliant career was so shortly to
come to an untimely end. The serious conversation just recorded was the
last in whic