e a man seated on the grass outside the
heavenly gate, from which, slow-opening every evening as the sun went
down, came an angel to teach, and teach, until he too should be fit to
enter in: an hour would arrive when she would no longer have to come
out to him where he sat. Under such an influence all that was gentlest
and sweetest in his nature might well develop with rapidity, and every
accidental roughness--and in him there was no other--by swift degrees
vanish from both speech and manners. The angels do not want tailors to
make their clothes: their habits come out of themselves. But we are
often too hard upon our fellows; for many of those in the higher ranks
of life--no, no, I mean of society--whose insolence wakens ours, as
growl wakes growl in the forest, are not yet so far removed from the
savage--I mean in their personal history--as some in the lowest ranks.
When a nobleman mistakes the love of right in another for a hatred of
refinement, he can not be far from mistaking insolence for good
manners. Of such a nobility, good Lord, deliver us from all envy!

As to falling in love with a lady like Mary, such a thing was as far
from Jasper's consciousness as if she had been a duchess. She belonged
to another world from his, a world which his world worshiped, waiting.
He might miss her even to death; her absence might, for him, darken the
universe as if the sun had withdrawn his brightness; but who thinks of
falling in love with the sun, or dreams of climbing nearer to his
radiance?

The day will one day come--or what of the long-promised kingdom of
heaven?--when a woman, instead of spending anxious thought on the
adornment of her own outward person, will seek with might the adornment
of the inward soul of another, and will make that her crown of
rejoicing. Nay, are there none such even now? The day will come when a
man, rather than build a great house for the overflow of a mighty
hospitality, will give himself, in the personal labor of outgoing love,
to build spiritual houses like St. Paul--a higher art than any of man's
invention. O my brother, what were it not for thee to have a hand in
making thy brother beautiful!

Be not indignant, my reader: not for a moment did I imagine thee
capable of such a mean calling! It is left to a certain school of weak
enthusiasts, who believe that such growth, such embellishment, such
creation, is all God cares about; these enthusiasts can not indeed see,
so blind have they beco