truth of those bitter words; and been startled by the fading of the
sunshine from the cloud of their life into the sudden agony of the
knowledge that the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and the
endurance of it as transient as the dew. But it is not always that,
even at such times of melancholy surprise, we can enter into any
true perception that this human life shares in the nature of it, not
only the evanescence, but the mystery of the cloud; that its avenues
are wreathed in darkness, and its forms and courses no less
fantastic, than spectral and obscure; so that not only in the vanity
which we cannot grasp, but in the shadow which we cannot pierce, it
is true of this cloudy life of ours, that "man walketh in a vain
shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain."

And least of all, whatever may have been the eagerness of our
passions, or the height of our pride, are we able to understand in
its depth the third and most solemn character in which our life is
like those clouds of heaven; that to it belongs not only their
transcience, not only their mystery, but also their power; that in
the cloud of the human soul there is a fire stronger than the
lightning, and a grace more precious than the rain; and that though
of the good and evil it shall one day be said alike, that the place
that knew them knows them no more, there is an infinite separation
between those whose brief presence had there been a blessing, like
the mist of Eden that went up from the earth to water the garden,
and those whose place knew them only as a drifting and changeful
shade, of whom the heavenly sentence is, that they are "wells
without water; clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the
mist of darkness is reserved for ever."

To those among us, however, who have lived long enough to form some