cut off in the flower of their days, and few
indeed of them laid their bones in the sepulchres of their
fathers. They knew the service which they had chosen,
and they did not ask the wages for which they had not
laboured. Life with them was no summer holyday, but
a holy sacrifice offered up to duty, and what their
Master sent was welcome. Beautiful is old age--beautiful
as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious
summer. In the old man, nature has fulfilled her work;
she loads him with her blessings; she fills him with
the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his
children and his children's children, she rocks him
softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with
blessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful.
It is beautiful, but not the most beautiful. There is
another life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with
bleeding feet and aching brow; the life of which the
cross is the symbol; a battle which no peace follows,
this side the grave; which the grave gapes to finish,
before the victory is won; and--strange that it should
be so--this is the highest life of man. Look back
along the great names of history; there is none whose
life has been other than this. They to whom it has
been given to do the really highest work in this earth--
whoever they are, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian,
warriors, legislators, philosophers, priests, poets, kings,
slaves--one and all, their fate has been the same--the
same bitter cup has been given to them to drink; and
so it was with the servants of England in the sixteenth
century. Their life was a long battle, either with the
elements or with men, and it was enough for them to
fulfil their work, and to pass away in the hour when
God had nothing more to bid them do. They did not
complain, and why should we complain for them?
Peaceful life was not what they desired, and an
honourable death had no terrors for them. Theirs was
the old Grecian spirit, and the great heart of the
Theban poet lived again in them:--

thanein d' oisin anagka
ti ke tis ananumon geras en skoto
kathemenos epsoi matan, apanton
kalon ammoros

"Seeing" in Gilbert's own brave words, "that death
is inevitable, and the fame of virtue is immortal;
wherefore in this behalf mutare vel timere sperno."

In the conclusion of these light sketches we pass
into an element different from that in which we have
been lately dwelling. The scenes in which Gilbert and
Davis played out their h