conscious of the grandeur of his own soul--involved by
a sublime self-sacrifice--by a virtue, not by a fault--in the most
dreadful of human calamities--ignominious degradation;--hurled in the
midday of life from the sphere of honest men--a felon's brand on his
name--a vagrant in his age; justice at last, but tardy and niggard, and
giving him but little joy when it arrives; because, ever thinking only
of others, his heart is wrapped in a child whom he cannot make happy in
the way in which his hopes have been set!--George-no, your illustration
might be turned by a sceptic into an argument against you."

GEORGE MORLEY.--"Not unless the sceptic refused the elementary
starting-ground from which you and I may reason; not if it be granted
that man has a soul, which it is the object of this life to enrich
and develop for another. We know from my uncle what William Losely was
before this calamity befell him--a genial boon-companion--a careless,
frank, 'good fellow'--all the virtues you now praise in him dormant,
unguessed even by himself. Suddenly came CALAMITY!--suddenly arose the
SOUL! Degradation of name, and with it dignity of nature! How poor, how
slight, how insignificant William Losely the hanger-on of rural Thanes
compared with that William Waife whose entrance into this house,
you--despite that felon's brand when you knew it was the martyr's
glory,--greeted with noble reverence; whom, when the mind itself was
stricken down--only the soul left to the wreck of the body--you tended
with such pious care as he lay on--your father's bed! And do you, who
hold Nobleness in such honour--do you, of all men, tell me that you
cannot recognise that Celestial tenderness which ennobled a Spirit for
all Eternity?"

"George, you are right," cried Darrell; "and I was a blockhead and
blunderer, as man always is when he mistakes a speck in his telescope
for a blotch in the sun of a system."

GEORGE MORLEY.--"But more difficult it is to recognise the mysterious
agencies of Heavenly Love when no great worldly adversity forces us
to pause and question. Let Fortune strike down a victim, and even the
heathen cries, 'This is the hand of God!' But where Fortune brings no
vicissitude; where her wheel runs smooth, dropping wealth or honours
as it rolls--where Affliction centres its work within the secret,
unrevealing heart--there, even the wisest man may not readily perceive
by what means Heaven is admonishing, forcing, or wooing him nearer to
i