The

would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons personal patriotism by laws so sapiently
that remained. In the eternal struggle for despotic. The face of the leading peoples
existence,' it would be the inferior and less
favoured race that had prevailed, - and
prevailed by virtue not of its qualities but
of its faults, by reason not of its stronger
vitality but of its weaker reticence and its
narrower brain.

of the existing world is not even set in this direction - but rather the reverse. tendencies of the age are three especially; and all three run counter to the operation of the wholesome law of natural selection.' We are learning to insist more and more on the freedom of the individual will, the right of every one to judge and act for himself. We are growing daily more foolishly and criminally lenient to every natural propensity, less and less inclined to resent, or control, or punish its indulgence. We absolutely refuse to let the poor, the incapable, or the diseased die; we enable or allow

Of course it will be urged that the principle of natural selection fails thus utterly because our civilisation is imperfect and misdirected; because our laws are insufficient; because our social arrangements are unwise; because our moral sense is languid or unenlightened. No doubt, if our legislators and rulers were quite sagacious and them, if we do not actually encourage them, quite stern, and our people in all ranks quite to propagate their incapacity, poverty, and wise and good, the beneficent tendencies constitutional disorders. And, lastly, de

of nature would continue to operate uncounteracted. No constitutions would be impaired by insufficient nutriment and none by unhealthy excess. No classes would be

so undeveloped either in mind or muscle as
to be unfitted for procreating sound and
vigorous offspring. The sick, the tainted,
and the maimed, would be too sensible and
too unselfish to dream of marrying and
handing down to their children the curse of
or if they were
diseased or feeble frames;

not self-controlled, the state would exercise
a salutary but unrelenting paternal despot-
ism, and supply the deficiency by vigilant
and timely prohibition. A republic is con-
ceivable in which paupers should be forbid-
den to propagate; in which all candidates
for the proud and solemn privilege of con-
tinuing an untainted and perfecting race
should be subjected to a pass or a competi-
tive examination, and those only should be
suffered to transmit their names and fami-
lies to future generations who had a pure,
vigorous and well-developed constitution to
transmit; - so that paternity should be the
right and function exclusively of the élite of
the nation, and humanity be thus enabled to
march on securely and without drawback to
its ultimate possibilities of progress. Every
damaged or inferior temperament might be
eliminated, and every special and superior
one be selected and enthroned, - till the
human race, both in its manhood and its
womanhood, became one glorious congrega-
tion of saints, sages, and athletes : :- till we
were all Blondins, all Shakespeares, Peri-
cles', Socrates', Columbuses and Fénelons.
But no nation - in modern times at least
- has ever yet approached this ideal; no
such wisdom or virtue has ever been found
except in isolated individual instances; no
government and no statesman has ever yet
dared thus to supplement the inadequacy of

mocracy is every year advancing in power,
and claiming the supreme right to govern
and democracy means the
and to guide:
management and control of social arrange-
ments by the least educated classes,.-by
those least trained to foresee or measure
consequences, - least acquainted with the
fearfully rigid laws of hereditary transmis-
sion, - least habituated to repress desires,
or to forego immediate enjoyment for future
and remote good.

No people in our

Obviously, no artificial prohibitions or restraints, no laws imposed from above and from without, can restore the principle of natural selection' to its due supremacy among the human race. days would endure the necessary interference and control; and perhaps a result so acquired might not be worth the cost of acquisition. We can only trust to the slow influences of enlightenment and moral susceptibility, percolating downwards and in time permeating all ranks. We can only watch and be careful that any other influences we do set in motion shall be such as, where they work at all, may work in the right direction. At present the prospect is not reassuring. We are progressing fast in many points, no doubt, but the progress is not wholly nor always of the right sort, nor without a large per contra. Legislation and philanthropy are improving the condition of the masses, but they are more and more losing the guidance and governance of the masses. Wealth accumulates above,

and wages rise below; but the cost of living augments with both operations, till those classes - the stamina of the nation-which are neither too rich nor too poor to fear a fall, find marriage a hazardous adventure, and dread the burden of large families. Medical science is mitigating suffering, and achieving some success in its warfare against

disease; but at the same time it enables the those whom it saves from dying prematurediseased to live. It controls and sometimes ly it preserves to propagate dismal and imhalf cures the maladies that spring from pro- perfect lives. In our complicated modern fligacy and excess, but in so doing it en- communities a race is being run between courages both, by stepping in between the moral and mental enlightenment and the cause and its consequence, and saving them deterioration of the physical constitution

from their natural and deterring penalties. It reduces the aggregate mortality by sanitary improvements and precautions; but

through the defeasance of the law of natural selection; - and on the issues of that race the destinies of humanity depend.

"Breathed o'er a beauty only born to fleet:
"A holy thing and precious is the dying
"Of that whose life was innocent and sweet."
From many a dim retreat

Lodged on high-bosomed, echoing, mountain-
lawn,

Or chiming convent in dark vale withdrawn, From cloudy shrine or rapt oracular seat

No breeze is fluting o'er the green morass:

Voices of loftier worlds that saintly strain repeat. Nor falls the thistle-down: in deep-drenched

VII.

The day whereon man's heart, itself a priest, No more from full-leaved woods that music Descending to that Empire pale wherein swells

Which in the summer filled the satiate ear:

A fostering sweetness still from bosky dells
Murmurs; but I can hear

A harsher sound when down, at intervals,
The dry leaf rattling falls.

Dark as those spots which herald swift disease,
The death-blot marks for death the leaf yet firm:
Beside the leaf down-trodden trails the worm:

In forest depths the haggard, whitening grass
Repines at youth departed. Half-stripped trees
Reveal, as one who says, "Thou too must pass,"

Plainlier each day their quaint anatomies.
Yon Poplar grove is troubled! Bright and bold
Babbled his cold leaves in the July breeze
As though above our heads a runnel rolled :

His mirth is o'er: subdued by old October,
He counts his lessening wealth, and, sadly so-
ber,

Tinkles his querulous tablets of wan gold.

VIIL.

Be still, ye sighs of the expiring year!

A sword there is: - ye play but with the sheath!

Whispers there are more piercing, yet more dear
Than yours, that come to me those boughs be-
neath;

And well-remembered footsteps known of old
Tread soft the mildewed mould.

O magic memory of the things that were

Beauty and Sorrow dwell, but pure from Sin, Holds with God's Church at once its fast and feast.

Dim woods, they, they alone your vaults should
tread,

The sad and saintly Dead!
Your pathos those alone ungrieved could meet
Who fit them for the Beatific Vision:
The things that as they pass us seem to cheat,
To them would be a music-winged fruition,
A cadence sweetest in the soft subsiding:
Transience to them were dear; - for theirs the

Lo there the regal exiles! - under shades
Deeper than ours, yet in a finer air
Climbing, successive, elders, youths, and maids,
The penitential mountain's ebon stair:
The earth-shadow clips that halo round their
hair:

And as lone outcasts watch a moon that wanes,
Receding slowly o'er their native plains,
Thus watch they, wistful, something far but fair.
Serene they stand, and wait,
Self-exiled by the ever-open gate:

Of those whose hands our childish locks ca- Awhile self-exiled from the All-pitying Eyes,

The woods revere, but cannot heal my pain.
Ye sheddings from the Yew-tree and the Pine,
If on your rich and aromatic dust

I laid my forehead, and my hands put forth

In the last beam that warms the forest floor,
No answer to my yearnings would be mine,
To me no answer through those branches hoar
Would reach in noontide trance, or moony
gust!

Her secret Heaven would keep, and mother
Earth

Speak from her deep heart, - "Where thou
know'st not, trust!"

IX.

That pang is past. Once more my pulses keep
A tenor calm, that knows nor grief nor joy;
Once more I move as one that died in sleep,
And treads, a Spirit, the haunts he trod, a boy,
And sees them like-unlike, and sees beyond:
Then earthly life comes back, and I despond.
Ah, life, not life! Dim woods of crimsoned beech,
That swathe the hills in sacerdotal stoles,
Burn on, burn on! the year ere long will reach
That day made holy to Departed Souls,

Lest mortal stain should blot their Paradise.
Silent they pace, ascending high and higher
The hills of God, a hand on every heart
That willing burns, a vase of cleansing fire
Fed by God's love in souls from God apart.
Each lifted face with thirst of long desire

Is pale; but o'er it grows a mystic sheen,
Because on them God's face, by them unseen,
Is turned, through narrowing darkness hourly
nigher.

, 'Tis not alone the pang for friends departed: -
The Autumnal grief that raises while it proves us
Wells from a holier source and deeper-hearted!
For this a sadness mingles with our mirth;

For this a bitter mingles with the sweetness;
The throne that shakes not is the Spirit's
right;

The heart and hope of Man are infinite; Heaven is his home, and, exiled here on earth, Completion most betrays the incompleteness!

XII.

With gates of pearl and diamond bastions
sheer.

The walls are agate and chalcedony:
On jacinth street and jasper parapet
The unwaning light is light of Deity,

Not beam of lessening moon or suns that set.

That undeciduous forestry of spires

Lets fall no leaf! those lights can never range:
Saintly fruitions and divine desires

Are blended there in rapture without change.
Man was not made for things that leave us,
For that which goeth and returneth,

Heaven is his home. - But hark! the breeze in- For hopes that lift us yet deceive us,

creases:

The sunset forests, catching sudden fire,
Flash, swell, and sing, a millioned-organed

For love that wears a smile yet mourneth; Not for fresh forests from the dead leaves spring

choir:

Roofing the West, rich clouds in glittering fleeces
O'er-arch ethereal spaces and divine
Of heaven's clear hyaline.

No dream is this! Beyond that radiance golden
God's Sons I see, His armies bright and strong,
The ensanguined Martyrs here with palms high
holden,

The Virgins there, a lily-lifting throng!
The Splendours nearer draw. In choral blending
The Prophets' and the Apostles' chant I hear;
I see the City of the Just descending

ing,

The cyclic re-creation which, at best,
Yields us - betrayal still to promise clinging
But tremulous shadows of the realm of rest:
For things immortal Man was made,
God's Image, latest from His hand,
Co-heir with Him, Who in Man's flesh arrayed
Holds o'er the worlds the Heavenly-Human
wand:

His portion this - sublime
To stand where access none hath Space or Time,
Above the starry host, the Cherub band,
To stand to advance- and after all to stand!

Of words a poor wretch in his terror may say, Why? Am I bidding for glory's roll?