religions), smoothes the frown on the Past, removes the flaming sword
from the future. The Orestes escapes from the hounding Furies, and
follows the oracle to the spot where the cleansing dews shall descend
on the expiated guilt.

He who hath never known in himself, nor marked in another, such
strange crisis in human fate, cannot judge of the strength and the
weakness it bestows. But till he can so judge, the spiritual part of
all history is to him a blank scroll, a sealed volume. He cannot
comprehend what drove the fierce Heathen, cowering and humbled, into
the fold of the Church; what peopled Egypt with eremites; what lined
the roads of Europe and Asia with pilgrim homicides; what, in the
elder world, while Jove yet reigned on Olympus, is couched in the dim
traditions of the expiation of Apollo, the joy-god, descending into
Hades; or why the sinner went blithe and light-hearted from the
healing lustrations of Eleusis. In all these solemn riddles of the
Jove world and the Christ's is involved the imperious necessity that
man hath of repentance and atonement: through their clouds, as a
rainbow, shines the covenant that reconciles the God and the man.

Now Life with strong arms plucked the reviving Harold to itself.
Already the news of his return had spread through the city, and his
chamber soon swarmed with joyous welcomes and anxious friends. But
the first congratulations over, each had tidings that claimed his
instant attention, to relate. His absence had sufficed to loosen half
the links of that ill-woven empire.

All the North was in arms. Northumbria had revolted as one man, from
the tyrannous cruelty of Tostig; the insurgents had marched upon York;
Tostig had fled in dismay, none as yet knew whither. The sons of