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should like to know which the second life at its best is unable to tell us. Neither be discouraged if spiritual intercourse should some day be a well-proved delusion, or if its facts prove to be facts of an unhealthy origin. There is a blessed religion which asks no revelation out of the common course of life. And lest we shall have grown a little tiresome and unpromising, we shall offer here an encouraging word or two which otherwise had been as well said later.

Will the reader say to himself, this is a startling, hopeless basis of joy—this belief in an unattainable perfection, and a destiny without a goal or an end? Nay, thou shalt live to rejoice in this truth as in no other, that thy destiny shall have no end; and the starry path, for itself alone, shall be prouder and brighter than the porch of fancy's fairest temple, or the prize of any supposable goal. We know the good earth sits fast. We dig through her shifting sands, and reaching the solid rock, we build as for eternity. All things seem set and appointed: we have our youth, then manhood, then gray hairs, and death is the end of all; the course is plain; the end is sure: therefore it is that we are repulsed from thought of a life that cannot pause, nor rest, nor attain an end. But, reader, there is no creed on earth but inculcates the same bottomless infinite. The sentiment is old,—it is almost universal, although its consequents may be apparent only to the thoughtful. It is the secret to every puzzle, the key to every fable under the sun. As we grow old in the ways and wisdom of the world—as we begin to learn that the joys we compass slip from our fruition like water from the lips of Tantalus,