growing arrogance of Realism." Each person is, for himself,
the keystone and the occasion of this universal edifice.
"Nothing, not God," he says, "is greater to one than oneself
is;" a statement with an irreligious smack at the first
sight; but like most startling sayings, a manifest truism on
a second. He will give effect to his own character without
apology; he sees "that the elementary laws never apologise."
"I reckon," he adds, with quaint colloquial arrogance, "I
reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house
by, after all." The level follows the law of its being; so,
unrelentingly, will he; everything, every person, is good in
his own place and way; God is the maker of all and all are in
one design. For he believes in God, and that with a sort of
blasphemous security. "No array of terms," quoth he, "no
array of terms can say how much at peace I am about God and
about death." There certainly never was a prophet who
carried things with a higher hand; he gives us less a body of
dogmas than a series of proclamations by the grace of God;
and language, you will observe, positively fails him to
express how far he stands above the highest human doubts and
trepidations.

But next in order of truths to a person's sublime conviction
of himself, comes the attraction of one person for another,
and all that we mean by the word love:-


"The dear love of man for his comrade - the attraction of
friend for friend,
Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and