direst of deceptions! Little do such suspect that their own behaviour has
withered their faith, and their unbelief dried up their life. They can
now no more believe in what they once felt, than a cloud can believe in
the rainbow it once bore on its bosom. But I am old, therefore dare to
say that I expect more and better and higher and lovelier things than I
have ever had. I am not going home to God to say--"Father, I have
imagined more beautiful things than thou art able to make true! They were
so good that thou thyself art either not good enough to will them, or not
strong enough to make them. Thou couldst but make thy creature dream of
them, because thou canst but dream of them thyself." Nay, nay! In the
faith of him to whom the Father shows all things he does, I expect
lovelier gifts than I ever have been, ever shall be able to dream of
asleep, or imagine awake.

I was now approaching the verge of woman-hood. What lay beyond it I could
ill descry, though surely a vague power of undeveloped prophecy dwells in
every created thing--even in the bird ere he chips his shell.

Should I dare, or could I endure to write of what lies now to my hand, if
I did not believe that not our worst but our best moments, not our low
but our lofty moods, not our times logical and scientific, but our times
instinctive and imaginative, are those in which we perceive the truth! In
them we behold it with a beholding which is one with believing. And,

"Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower",

could not Wordsworth, and cannot we, call up the vision of that hour? and
has not its memory almost, or even altogether, the potency of its
presence? Is not the very thought of any certain flower enough to make me