goes on; she casts her failures aside with merciless glee; she
seems to say to men oppressed by sorrow and sickness, "This is no
world for you; rejoice and make merry, or I have no need of you."
In a far-off way, indeed, the gentle beauty of nature may help a
sad heart, by seeming to assure one that the mind of God is set
upon what is fair and sweet; but neither God nor nature seems to
have any direct message to the stricken heart.


"Not till the fire is dying in the grate
Look we for any kinship with the stars,"


says a subtle poet; and such comfort as nature can give is not the
direct comfort of sympathy and tenderness, but only the comfort
that can be resolutely distilled from the contemplation of nature
by man's indomitable spirit. For nature tends to replace rather
than to heal; and the sadness of life consists for most of us in
the irreplaceableness of the things we love and lose. The lesson is
a hard one, that "Nature tolerates, she does not need." Let us only
be sure that it is a true one, for nothing but the truth can give
us ultimate repose. To the youthful spirit it is different, for all
that the young and ardent need is that, if the old fails them, some
new delight should be substituted. They but desire that the truth
should be hidden from their gaze; as in the childish stories, when
the hero and heroine have been safely piloted through danger and
brought into prosperity, the door is closed with a snap. "They
lived happily ever afterwards." But the older spirit knows that the
"ever" must be deleted, makes question of the "afterwards," and
looks through to the old age of bereavement and sorrow, when the