"Only whim, I fear; and you?" as Percival linked his arm into Ardworth's.

"Twenty years hence I will tell you what brought me hither!" answered
Ardworth, moving slowly back towards Whitehall.

"If we are alive then!"

"We live till our destinies below are fulfilled; till our uses have
passed from us in this sphere, and rise to benefit another. For the soul
is as a sun, but with this noble distinction,--the sun is confined in its
career; day after day it visits the same lands, gilds the same planets or
rather, as the astronomers hold, stands, the motionless centre of moving
worlds. But the soul, when it sinks into seeming darkness and the deep,
rises to new destinies, fresh regions unvisited before. What we call
Eternity, may be but an endless series of those transitions which men
call 'deaths,' abandonments of home after home, ever to fairer scenes and
loftier heights. Age after age, the spirit, that glorious Nomad, may
shift its tent, fated not to rest in the dull Elysium of the Heathen, but
carrying with it evermore its elements,--Activity and Desire. Why should
the soul ever repose? God, its Principle, reposes never. While we
speak, new worlds are sparkling forth, suns are throwing off their
nebulae, nebulae are hardening into worlds. The Almighty proves his
existence by creating. Think you that Plato is at rest, and Shakspeare
only basking on a sun-cloud? Labour is the very essence of spirit, as of
divinity; labour is the purgatory of the erring; it may become the hell
of the wicked, but labour is not less the heaven of the good!"

Ardworth spoke with unusual earnestness and passion, and his idea of the
future was emblematic of his own active nature; for each of us is wisely