ousand years ago, discoursed thus gravely of the
romantic part of our nature, whence comes it that in Christian lands
we think in so pagan a way of it, and turn the whole care of it to
ballad-makers, romancers, and opera-singers?

Let us look up in fear and reverence and say, "GOD is the great maker
of romance. HE, from whose hand came man and woman,--HE, who strung the
great harp of Existence with all its wild and wonderful and manifold
chords, and attuned them to one another,--HE is the great Poet of life."
Every impulse of beauty, of heroism, and every craving for purer love,
fairer perfection, nobler type and style of being than that which closes
like a prison-house around us, in the dim, daily walk of life, is
God's breath, God's impulse, God's reminder to the soul that there is
something higher, sweeter, purer, yet to be attained.

Therefore, man or woman, when thy ideal is shattered,--as shattered a
thousand times it must be,--when the vision fades, the rapture burns
out, turn not away in skepticism and bitterness, saying, "There is
nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink," but rather
cherish the revelations of those hours as prophecies and foreshadowings
of something real and possible, yet to be attained in the manhood, of
immortality. The scoffing spirit that laughs at romance is an apple of
the Devil's own handing from the bitter tree of knowledge;--it opens the
eyes only to see eternal nakedness.

If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship,--a boundless
worship and belief in some hero of your soul,--if ever you have so
loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have
gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from
heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your
whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet
of another, and all for nothing,--if you awoke bitterly betrayed and
deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of
heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest
capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you;
treasure it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so
feel,--that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul.

By such experiences are we taught the pathos, the sacredness of life;
and if we use them wisely, our eyes will ever after be anointed to see
what poems, what romances, what sublime tragedi