ous degrees, rules over matter, setting its
forces at defiance for the time, and yet never interfering with their
continued operations?

This seems a great law of the universe. The power of life, wherever
guided by _will_, whether in beast or man, or even where we can only
venture to speak of instinct, thus asserts its superiority. Within its
appointed range, the laws of the material world are evidently subject to
its control. Iron may be firmly held together by the attraction of
cohesion: but man wills its severance, and it is effected.

Nor does it contravene the general assertion here made, that we act by
opposing one natural force to another. The rising of the sledge hammer,
to fall with a force more than its own, is just as much against the laws
of matter as the breaking of the iron beneath its blows.

All _power_, so far as we can judge, is spiritual--_i.e._, originates in
spirit, and is exerted in obedience to _will_, or to something
equivalent.

Nor, again, will it avail an objector to say that _spirit_ is also under
law as well as matter. The laws of the one sphere, at all events, are
not those of the other. They may have their relations, but they are not
those of equality. Spirit is sovereign--matter subject; or, if in any
case it should be otherwise, it is from some weak refusal of the spirit
to assert its own power.

AENONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.

CHAPTER XVI.

Gliding softly beneath the shrubbery, and beneath one of the side
colonnades, Leta gained the house unperceived, passing Sergius, who
loitered where she had been sitting, upon the coping of the fountain
basin. His friends had departed, bearing away with them his gold and
much else that was of value; and he, with the consciousness of evil
besetting him on every side, had morbidly wandered out to try if in the
cool air he could compose his thoughts to sobriety. As he sat rocking to
and fro, and humming to himself broken snatches of song, Leta stood
under one of the arches of the court, glowering at him, and half hoping
that he would lose his balance and fall into the water behind. It was
not deep enough to drown him, but if it had been, she felt in no mood to
rescue him. In a few moments, however, the fresh breeze, partially
dissipating the fumes of the wine which he had drunk, somewhat revived
him; making him more clearly conscious of his misfortunes, indeed, but
engendering in him, for the instant, a new and calmer state of