MARHAM.

Tulips, lilies, tiger-lilies, violets, blue-bells, hyacinths, all are coming up. all are coming up.

And here are primroses quite yellow with blossoms. Ay, how all the flowers are pushing themselves through what was as hard as ice a few days since!

AUBIN.

It is as though the dead earth were blossoming.

MARHAM.

Yes, but these stems, and leaves, and flowers have sprung out of roots.

AUBIN.

Well, so they have. But then those roots were formed out of the earth. And there is not a fibre of any one of them but was mould a little while since. Look at the honeysuckle; it is in leaf; and so is the lilac, almost; and the gooseberry bushes are very nearly. The flowers draw nourishment out of the ground for themselves, and encouragement for us; and in sight of a thinker, when they blossom, it is not only into beautiful colors, but into suggestions of immortal hope. O, no, no, no! There is not all this abounding, teeming life in nature for us to see, and think of, and trust in, and then fail of.

MARHAM.

O these birds! how joyously they do sing! the blackbird, the lark, the hedge-sparrow, ay, and the bulfinch, and the robin. I remember,

when I was a boy, a robin used to build in the garden gate-post. Three or four years he did; and I suppose he died then. Birds, our English birds, most of them, and I suppose most birds, are very short-lived. Well, it is something to think of, that none of all these birds were what I listened to when I was a boy.

AUBIN.

Nor any of them birds that God fed at that time, and made a delight of in the world.

Well, Oliver.

MARHAM.

AUBIN.

I mean, that you ought to listen to the songs of these birds like a child of God, and not like one without hope. You said that the birds now are not what you listened to in your youth. And you said this mournfully ;-yes, uncle, you did; -and so you well might, if you thought yourself made altogether as they are; which you are not.

MARHAM.

No; all flesh is not the same flesh, St. Paul says; but there is one kind of flesh of men, and another of birds.

AUBIN.

And so you are not to feel, along with these birds, in such a way as though, like a bird, you were yourself only a little clay made alive. Birds do not live long; but they do sing with rap

ture

MARHAM.

So they do. But an old man cannot but think how they will all be dead in a year or two, and he himself as well.

AUBIN.

One star differs from another star in glory, and one world from another world in character, most likely. And so it is not unlikely that into this world of mortality angels may be admitted by God as visitors; and if so, no doubt it is to them a joy to see how in decay, and through it, the world renews itself, — how the dead leaves of autumn and the perishing trees of the forest do but deepen the mould, and make it productive of new and sometimes better trees, and to hear how fresh and joyful the chorus of the woods always is. In the hearing of God, an undying song kept up by dying things. And we, we will hear it like children of God, with our souls as well as with our mortal ears. Thoughts of mortality may be too much with us. And the birds were never meant to sing them to us. Rather it ought to be a joy to us, that God perfects for man such delight, and for himself such endless thanksgiving, out of the throats of such frail things as birds.

MARHAM.

Thank you, Oliver, thank you. You will have your wish, as to your dying-time, I am almost sure. For you have years to live yet, I hope,

And a few Aprils lived like the last half-hour will make it be spring-time in your soul always.

God grant it!

AUBIN.

MARHAM.

All that is good for our souls, God does grant; and to have it, we have only to ask it.

AUBIN.

An undevout soul is like a tree in rich earth, but with perished roots. Such a tree may have the sun to warm it, and the dews to moisten its bark, and the breezes to blow through its branches; and so it may maintain a show of life, but only a show. And the soul of a man may receive into itself, through his eyes, all the objects of the world, and through his ears, the knowledge of all that has ever happened, and his mind become, at the best, not much better than a dictionary of words, and a growing catalogue of things. Because, for knowledge to become wisdom, and for the soul to grow, the soul must be rooted in God; and it is through prayer that there comes to us that which is the strength of our strength, and the virtue of our virtue, the Holy Spirit.

MARHAM.

And so we will pray often and heartily while we can; for soon we shall be cut down. But we shall live again like these flowers. Yes! I shall blossom again into beauty, withered as I look.

AUBIN.

Yes, uncle; within your shrunk form there is what will spread itself into an angel, winged, and free of the heavens. And there is in you a swiftness, that may some time make of worlds mere resting-places on a journey into infinity. But there is in you more than this; for there is hidden in you a likeness to the everlasting youth of the Son of God.

MARHAM.

Can these bones live? Or can there be in them what will quicken into an immortal? Lord God, thou knowest!

AUBIN.

See this vine. It is merely dry sticks and ragged bark, to look at. Yet inside there is what will be, in August, gracefulness, and thick leaves, and a hundred bunches of grapes. Do I know this of the vine, and cannot I be sure that I know something like it of myself?

MARHAM.

God makes these flowers what they are, and he will not forget us, nor fail us; and we ought to feel this the more, the more we consider the flowers.

AUBIN.

From all God's works, the spirit of God is to be caught, if they are but looked at religiously. And by our dwelling devoutly in the world, our