n ships at sea.

A Happy New-Year!--Ah! ere this ARIA, sung _sotto voce_, reach your ears
(eyes are ears, and ears eyes), the week of all weeks will be over and
gone, and the New-Year will seem growing out of the old year's
ashes!--for the year is your only Phoenix. But what with time to do
has a wish--a hope--a prayer! Their power is in the Spirit that gives
them birth. And what is Spirit but the well-head of thoughts and
feelings flowing and overflowing all life, yet leaving the well-head
full of water as ever--so lucid, that on your gazing intently into its
depths, it seems to become a large soft spiritual eye, reflecting the
heavens and the earth; and no one knows what the heavens and the earth
are, till he has seen them there--for that God made the heavens and the
earth we feel from that beautiful revelation--and where feeling is not,
knowledge is dead, and a blank the universe. Love is life. The unloving
merely breathe. A single sweet beat of the heart is token of something
spiritual that will be with us again in Paradise. "O, bliss and beauty!
are these our feelings"--thought we once in a dream--"all circling in
the sunshine--fair-plumed in a flight of doves!" The vision kept sailing
on the sky--"to and fro for our delight"--no sound on their wings more
than on their breasts; and they melted away in light as if they were
composed of light--and in the hush we heard high-up and far-off
music--as of an angel's song.

That was a dream of the mysterious night; but now we are broad
awake--and see no emblematical phantoms, but the mere sights of the
common day. But sufficient for the day is the beauty thereof--and it
inspires us with affection for all beneath the skies. Will the whole
world, then, promise henceforth to love us?--and we promise henceforth
to love the whole world.

It seems the easiest of all easy things to be kind and good--and then it
is so pleasant! "Self-love and social are the same," beyond all
question; and in that lies the nobility of our nature. The intensest
feeling of self is that of belonging to a brotherhood. All selves then
know they have duties which are in truth loves--and loves are
joys--whether breathed in silence, or uttered in words, or embodied in
actions; and if they filled all life, then all life would be good--and
heaven would be no more than a better earth. And how may all men go to
heaven? By making themselves a heaven on earth, and thus preparing their
spirits to breathe empyr