romance. He, from whose hand came man and woman,—He, who strung the great harp of Existence with all its wild and wonderful and manifold chords, and attuned them to one another,—He is the great Poet of life.’ Every impulse of beauty, of heroism, and every craving for purer love, fairer perfection, nobler type and style of being than that which closes like a prison-house around us, in the dim, daily walk of life, is God’s breath, God’s impulse, God’s reminder to the soul that there is something higher, sweeter, purer, yet to be attained. God He He He [74] [74] Therefore, man or woman, when thy ideal is shattered—as shattered a thousand times it must be; when the vision fades, the rapture burns out, turn not away in scepticism and bitterness, saying, ‘There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink,’ but rather cherish the revelations of those hours as prophecies and fore-shadowings of something real and possible, yet to be attained in the manhood of immortality. The scoffing spirit that laughs at romance, is an apple of the Devil’s own handing from the bitter tree of knowledge;—it opens the eyes only to see eternal nakedness. If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship—a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul; if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations, have gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing,—if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you; treasure it, as the highest honour of your being, that ever you could so feel,—that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul. By such experiences are we taught the pathos, the sacredness of life; and if we use them wisely, our eyes will ever after be anointed to see what poems, what romances, what sublime tragedies lie around us in the daily walk of life, ‘written not with ink, but in fleshly tables of the heart.’ The dullest street of the most prosaic town has matter in it for more smiles, more tears, more intense excitement, than ever were
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