"She calls it by another name, but she understands it well enough to
illustrate the principles by example. She tells me that labour and
duty are so taken up by you--


'In den heitern Regionen
Wo die reinen Formen wohnen,'


that they become joy and beauty,--is it so?"

"I am sure that Charlotte never said anything half so poetical. But,
in plain words, the days pass with me very happily. I should be
ungrateful if I were not happy. Heaven has bestowed on me so many
sources of love,--wife, children, books, and the calling which, when
one quits one's own threshold, carries love along with it into the
world beyond; a small world in itself,--only a parish,--but then my
calling links it with infinity."

"I see; it is from the sources of love that you draw the supplies for
happiness."

"Surely; without love one may be good, but one could scarcely be
happy. No one can dream of a heaven except as the abode of love.
What writer is it who says, 'How well the human heart was understood
by him who first called God by the name of Father'?"

"I do not remember, but it is beautifully said. You evidently do not
subscribe to the arguments in Decimus Roach's 'Approach to the
Angels.'"