I will not here discuss the positive;

That side is rather for myself and her

Whom I watch daily, in whose face as yet

I see no trace of turning back again

From what, with her own will, she ventured on.

The negative is rather what to you

Will be most interesting, as indeed

Your doubts all turn upon it.

Firstly, then,

(I cannot put the sermon from my pen ;

It must have written sermons at some time ;)

I grant the truth of Goëthe's axiom

By taking Art to signify the path

To God's infinity, and Science that

To God's minuteness, which in very truth

Is also infinite; I grant it true

In this respect, as linked with principles,

And not, as some would have it, linked with facts,—

A daub on canvas, or a pin-spiked fly;

In this respect, as linked with principles,

'Tis true indeed, and so magnificent

As to deserve the name of revelation.

Now let me trace my second parallel ;

'He who has love and honour wanteth not

'A form of marriage; he who lacketh them

'Let him have form,'-to bind him, who would else

But treat his wife as if she were a whore,

His children as the great unfathered throng

Who crowd our workhouses and lawless streets.

Let me be plain; there is not any man

Who has not love and honour in some sort ;

Though oft 'tis difficult to see wherein

That love is raised above a brute's desire,
Or honour raised above the brute's revenge
On those who think to share his property.
There is not any man devoid of both ;

But let us journey upward in the scale;
And let us come to those with whom their love

Is not the daub on canvas, not the fact

Which oft results, though not invariably,

From their desire to draw more near to God,

Through nearness to each other ;-nearness which

Is very love, the entrance whereunto

Is nakedness-is free acknowledgment

Of all high thoughts, of all corrupting stains
Which inmost conscience, like the eye of God,

Beholds, and ofttimes uses as a thorn

To prick the spirit from its sluggishness.

And this is what we strive for, this is what

We two have found and fain would show the

world,―

The union of two spirits, which includes

Material union, and alone has power

To lift the latter from that foul abyss

Of animal passions which whole hosts of men Think, vainly, they escape from, when they turn To settle down, as well they call the state

Which is to them the exhausted settling down

Of sand but lately drifted in the whirl

Of fierce cross-currents.

Thus we would define

Our love, and honour rises in the scale

With love's ascension; all minutest forms

Of speech, or act, or thought, are parts of that
Which is to love in some ways as to art

Is science; dealing rather with the fact
Than with the principle, but through the fact
Still working to the principle, as love
Through principle necessitates the fact.

All this is true, I hear you say; but then
What need to run so counter to the world,
When to yourselves the union you desire

Exists in spite of social formalists ?

What need? why, every need! Remember this,

History will teach you if my words do not,—

That action only is the lever which

Has power to move the world; had Cæsar fallen

If envy had been peevishly content

To speak of daggers? Had the Tudor race

Been blessed in its declining, had not he

Who gave

it all its greatness, first been cursed

For setting up his individual will

Against all custom and established law?

Had Hampden been a hero, Washington,

Or scores beside, if thoughts that burned in them
Had found no outlet but in wordy smoke,

And not burst forth into that cleansing fire
In which new systems needs must be baptised?
These, you may say, worked for the public weal-
Worked for the world; but such an act as ours
Has no such plea. O misbelieving dog!

Answer me this ;-in days when you were young,-
An age ago, would you have rather run
The risk of showing up some rainy morn

Before a magistrate, for blows bestowed

On guardians of the peace, or-(be advised!)

Or walked on Sunday in a wide-awake

Unto some fane (you best know which they are,)
Wherein sweet Fashion loveth to confess

Its week-day sins? Your hesitation proves
The truth I plead for,--that the social yoke