this violet tells, this little grey shell writes in the curl of its
spire? The bitter truth that human life is no more to the universe than
that of the unnoticed hill-snail in the grass should make us think more
and more highly of ourselves as human--as men--living things that think.
We must look to ourselves to help ourselves. We must think ourselves into
an earthly immortality. By day and by night, by years and by centuries,
still striving, studying, searching to find that which shall enable us to
live a fuller life upon the earth--to have a wider grasp upon its violets
and loveliness, a deeper draught of the sweet-briar wind. Because my
heart beats feebly to-day, my trickling pulse scarcely notating the
passing of the time, so much the more do I hope that those to come in
future years may see wider and enjoy fuller than I have done; and so much
the more gladly would I do all that I could to enlarge the life that
shall be then. There is no hope on the old lines--they are dead, like the
empty shells; from the sweet delicious violets think out fresh petals of
thought and colours, as it were, of soul.

Never was such a worshipper of earth. The commonest pebble, dusty and
marked with the stain of the ground, seems to me so wonderful; my mind
works round it till it becomes the sun and centre of a system of thought
and feeling. Sometimes moving aside the tufts of grass with careless
fingers while resting on the sward, I found these little pebble-stones
loose in the crumbly earth among the rootlets. Then, brought out from the
shadow, the sunlight shone and glistened on the particles of sand that
adhered to it. Particles adhered to my skin--thousands of years between
finger and thumb, these atoms of quartz, and sunlight shining all that
time, and flowers blooming and life glowing in all, myriads of living
things, from the cold still limpet on the rock to the burning, throbbing
heart of man. Sometimes I found them among the sand of the heath, the sea
of golden brown surging up yellow billows six feet high about me, where