fill it with imaginings; I have called aloud unto the winds and tasked my
soul to waken their silence to reply. All was a waste--a stillness--an
infinity--without a wanderer or a voice! The dead answered me not, when
I invoked them; and in the vigils of the still night I looked from the
rank grass and the mouldering stones to the Eternal Heavens, as man looks
from decay to immortality! Oh! that awful magnificence of repose--that
living sleep--that breathing yet unrevealing divinity, spread over those
still worlds! To them also I poured my thoughts--but in a whisper. I
did not dare to breathe aloud the unhallowed anguish of my mind to the
majesty of the unsympathising stars! In the vast order of creation--in
the midst of the stupendous system of universal life, my doubt and
inquiry were murmured forth--a voice crying in the wilderness and
returning without an echo unanswered unto myself!"

The deep light of the summer moon shone over Falkland's countenance,
which Emily gazed on, as she listened, almost tremblingly, to his words.
His brow was knit and hueless, and the large drops gathered slowly over
it, as if wrung from the strained yet impotent tension of the thoughts
within. Emily drew nearer to him--she laid her hand upon his own.
"Listen to me," she said: "if a herald from the grave could satisfy your
doubt, I would gladly die that I might return to you!" "Beware," said
Falkland, with an agitated but solemn voice; "the words, now so lightly
spoken, may be registered on high." "Be it so!" replied Emily firmly,
and she felt what she said. Her love penetrated beyond the tomb, and she
would have forfeited all here for their union hereafter.

"In my earliest youth," said Falkland, more calmly than he had yet
spoken, "I found in the present and the past of this world enough to
direct my attention to the futurity of another: if I did not credit all
with the enthusiast, I had no sympathies with the scorner: I sat myself