Our vaunted life is one long funeral,

and even Hope is buried with the "faces that smiled and fled."

Death, at least in some of its aspects, seemed to him the

Stern law of every mortal lot,
Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear;
And builds himself I know not what
Of second life I know not where.

And yet, in gleams of happier insight, he saw the man who "flagged not
in this earthly strife,"

His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,

mount, though hardly, to eternal life. And, as he mused over his
father's grave, the conviction forced itself upon his mind that
somewhere in the "labour-house of being" there still was employment for
that father's strength, "zealous, beneficent, firm."

Here indeed is the more cheerful aspect of his "criticism of life." Such
happiness as man is capable of enjoying is conditioned by a frank
recognition of his weaknesses and limitations; but it requires also for
its fulfilment the sedulous and dutiful employment of such powers and
opportunities as he has.

First and foremost, he must realize the "majestic unity" of his nature,
and not attempt by morbid introspection to dissect himself into