iful
as that even name and sex become a memory dim as a distant sail upon an
evening sea,--this must be a sight fitted to bring laughter to the
heart of God. Deacon Phoebe is one trait in a gentleman. Sidney
Carton is of the same sort, save that the hero element stands more
apparent. His is a larger field, a more attractive background, thus
throwing his figure into clearer relief. Deacon Phoebe was the
self-abasement of humility, Sidney Carton is the supreme surrender of
love; but the end of both is service. There ought to be a gallery in
our earth from which men and women might lean and look on nobilities
like Sidney Carton. That beatified face; that hand holding a woman's
trembling hand, what time he whispered for her comfort, "I am the
resurrection and the life," as the crowded tumbrel rattled on to the
guillotine, and he faced death with smile as sweet as love upon his
face, and love making a man thus divine,--this is Sidney Carton, who
stirs our soul as storms stir the seas. Bonaventure, as drawn by
Cable, is of similar design. He is unconscious as a flower; but had
learned, as his schoolmaster-priest had taught him, to write "self"
with a small "s;" so an untutored soul, lacerated with grief, pierced
by suffering, gave himself over to goodness and help, becoming absorbed
therein. Such is Bonaventure. He was what Tennyson has said of "the
gardener's daughter," "A sight to make an old man young."

Love has learned to work miracles in character. Rains do not wash air
so clean as love washes character, whiting "as no fuller on earth can
white" it. And how constantly manhood neighbors with love is a
beautiful and noteworthy circumstance. Here place Pete, in "The
Manxman." You can not over-praise him. Some esteem him a fabulous
character; but knowing his island and people well, I feel sure he is
flesh and blood, though flesh and blood so uncommon and superior
stagger our faith for a moment. It is the glory of our race that at
rare springtime it bursts into such bloom that painter and poet are
both bankrupt in attempting to copy this loveliness. Pete is such an
effort of nature. His letters to himself, written as from his wife, to
cover her shame and desertion, present a spectacle so magnanimous and
pathetic as to upbraid us that we had never learned nobilities so
sublime. Love made him great. And Macdonald, in Donal Grant, has
shown us a strong, pure soul of moral strength, religious appetencies,
de