en are to the universe as the gnats in the
sunbeam to the sun; they can sooner credit that the constellations are
charged with their destiny, than that they can suffer and die without
arousing a sigh for them anywhere in all creation. It is not vanity, as
the mocker too hastily thinks. It is the helpless, pathetic cry of the
mortal to the immortal nature from which he springs:

"Leave me not alone: confound me not with the matter that perishes: I am
full of pain--have pity!"

To be the mere sport of hazard as a dead moth is on the wind--the heart
of man refuses to believe it can be so with him. To be created only to
be abandoned--he will not think that the forces of existence are so
cruel and so unrelenting and so fruitless. In the world he may learn to
say that he thinks so, and is resigned to it; but in loneliness the
penumbra of his own existence lies on all creation, and the winds and
the stars and the daylight and night and the vast unknown mute forces of
life--all seem to him that they must of necessity be either his
ministers or his destroyers.

* * *

Of all the innocent things that die, the impossible dreams of the poet
are the things that die with most pain, and, perhaps, with most loss to
humanity. Those who are happy die before their dreams. This is what the
old Greek saying meant.

The world had not yet driven the sweet, fair follies from Signa's head,
nor had it yet made him selfish. If he had lived in the age when
Timander could arrest by his melodies the tide of revolution, or when
the harp of the Persian could save Bagdad from the sword and flame of
Murad, all might have been well with him. But the time is gone by when
music or any other art was a king. All genius now is, at its best, but a
servitor--well or ill fed.

* * *

Silently he put his hand out and grasped Signa's, and led him into the
Spanish Chapel, and sank on his knees.

The glory of the morning streamed in from the cloister; all the dead
gold and the faded hues were transfigured by it; the sunbeams shone on
the face of Laura, the deep sweet colours of Bronzino's Coena glowed
upward in the vault amidst the shadows; the company of the blessed,
whom the old painters had gathered there, cast off the faded robes that
the Ages had wrapped them in, and stood forth like the tender spirits
that they were, and seemed to say, "Nay, we, and they who made us, we
are not dead, but only waiting."

It is a