ortion; but the proportion was just as much sacrificed, indeed more
sacrificed, by ignoring the facts. Neither was he at all afraid of any
undue preponderance of the morbid element in his contemplations. He
took far too deep a delight in the beautiful and gracious sights and
sounds of earth for that; and the conclusion that he drew, as he turned
away, was that a suspension of judgment in the face of an insoluble
mystery was the only course; to leave the windows of the soul open to
every impression, to every fact, whether it was the voice and glance of
humanity, the sweetness of art and sound, the appeal of ancient
buildings, the waving of tall trees, the faces of bright flowers, the
songs of lively birds in the thicket--ay, and the intimations of death
and decay as well, all that was ugly and wretched in humanity, the
coarse song from the alehouse, the slatternly woman about her weary
work, the crying of a child that had been punished, the foul oozings of
the stockyard. These were all as real, as true impressions as the
others. To strike some balance, neither to forget the ideal in the
real, or to lose sight of the real in the ideal, that was his task.
And the consolation, though a stern one, lay in the fact that, dark and
bitter as the mystery was at one point, gracious and glowing as it was
at another, yet it was certainly _there_. Concrete and abstract, the
impressions of sense, the intuitions of the spirit, each and all had
their part. In this life, this swift interchange of darkness and
light, of sunshine and gloom, he might never approach the secret--nay,
he did not even hope that he would. But at least he could draw a few
steps nearer, and with a humble heart he would wait for the glory that
should be revealed, or for the silence and darkness that it might be
would close upon him. For whatever should be the end, Hugh had no
doubt that there was certainly behind life a mind and a will, to which
it was not only no mystery, but a truth simple, obvious and plain; for
him, his duty was to use both observation and imagination; not to let
the imagination outrun the observation, but to mark all that he could,
and infer what he could; while at the same time he felt equally sure
that he was not to be a mere observer, blindly registering impressions,
content to analyse difficulties. Better than that was to repose an
ardent faith in his intuitions; but each alike, without the aid of the
other, was perilous and insecur