Quotes by George MacDonald

'Twas on such nights, after such sunny days, The poets of old Greece saw beauteous shapes Sighed forth from out the rooted, earth-fast trees, With likeness undefinable retained In higher human form to their tree-homes, Which fainting let them forth into the air, And lived a life in death till they returned. The large-limbed, sweepy-curved, smooth-rounded beech Gave forth the perfect woman to the night; From the pale birch, breeze-bent and waving, stole The graceful, slight-curved maiden, scarcely grown. The hidden well gave forth its hidden charm, The Naiad with the hair that flowed like streams, And arms that gleamed like moonshine on wet sands. The broad-browed oak, the stately elm, gave forth Their inner life in shapes of ecstasy. All varied, loveliest forms of womanhood Dawned out in twilight, and athwart the grass Half danced with cool and naked feet, half floated Borne on winds dense enough for them to swim. O what a life they lived! in poet's brain-- Not on this earth, alas!--But you are sad; You do not speak, dear lady. _Lilia_. Pardon me. If such words make me sad, I am to blame. _Lord S_. Ah, no! I spoke of lovely, beauteous things: Beauty and sadness always go together. Nature thought Beauty too golden to go forth Upon the earth without a meet alloy. If Beauty had been born the twin of Gladness, Poets had never needed this dream-life; Each blessed man had but to look beside him, And be more blest. How easily could God Have made our life one consciousness of joy! It is denied us. Beauty flung around Most lavishly, to teach our longing hearts To worship her; then when the soul is full Of lovely shapes, and all sweet sounds that breathe, And colours that bring tears into the eyes-- Steeped until saturated with her essence; And, faint with longing, gasps for some one thing More beautiful than all, containing all, Essential Beauty's self, that it may say: "Thou art my Queen--I dare not think to crown thee, For thou art crowned already, every part, With thy perfection; but I kneel to thee, The utterance of the beauty of the earth, As of the trees the Hamadryades; I worship thee, intense of loveliness! Not sea-born only; sprung from Earth, Air, Ocean, Star-Fire; all elements and forms commingling To give thee birth, to utter each its thought Of beauty held in many forms diverse, In one form, holding all, a living Love, Their far-surpassing child, their chosen queen By virtue of thy dignities combined!

He turned white with dismay--then red with anger, and stood speechless. But he was quickly brought to himself by a sharp pinch under the shoulder blade from Kelpie’s long teeth: he had forgotten her, and she had taken the advantage. “Wha tellt ye that, Lizzy?” he said. “I’m no at leeberty to say, Ma’colm, but I’m sure it’s true, an’ my hert’s like to brak.” “Puir lassie!” said Malcolm, whose own trouble had never at any time rendered him insensible to that of others. “But is ’t onybody ’at _kens_ what he says?” he pursued. “Weel, I dinna jist richtly ken gien she _kens_, but I think she maun ha’e gude rizzon, or she wadna say as she says. Oh me! me! my bairnie ’ill be scornin’ me sair whan he comes to ken. Ma’colm, ye’re the only ane ’at disna luik doon upo’ me, an whan ye cam ower the tap o’ the Boar’s Tail, it was like an angel in a fire-flaucht, an’ something inside me said--_Tell ’im; tell ’im;_ an’ sae I bude to tell ye.” Malcolm was even too simple to feel flattered by the girl’s confidence, though to be trusted is a greater _compliment_ than to be loved. “Hearken, Lizzy!” he said. “I canna e’en think, wi’ this brute ready ilka meenute to ate me up. I maun tak her hame. Efter that, gien ye wad like to tell me onything, I s’ be at yer service. Bide aboot here--or, luik ye: here’s the key o’ yon door; come throu’ that intill the park--throu’ aneth the toll ro’d, ye ken. There ye’ll get into the lythe (_lee_) wi’ the bairnie; an’ I’ll be wi’ ye in a quarter o’ an hoor. It’ll tak me but twa meenutes to gang hame. Stoat ’ill put up the mere, and I’ll be back--I can du ’t in ten meenutes.” “Eh! dinna hurry for me, Ma’colm: I’m no worth it,” said Lizzy. But Malcolm was already at full speed along the top of the dune. “Lord preserve ’s!” cried Lizzy, when she saw him clear the brass swivel. “Sic a laad as that is! Eh, he maun ha’e a richt lass to lo’e him some day! It’s a’ ane to him, boat or beast. He wadna turn frae the deil himsel’. An syne he’s jist as saft ’s a deuk’s neck whan he speyks till a wuman or a bairn--ay, or an auld man aither!

A SAD BEGINNING. Towards morning he went to bed, and slept late--heavily and unreposefully; and, alas! when he woke, there was the old feeling returned! How _could_ he forgive the son that had so disgraced him! Instead of betaking himself afresh to the living strength, he began--not directly to fight himself, but to try to argue himself right, persuading himself on philosophical grounds that it was better to forgive his son; that it was the part of a wise man, the part of one who had respect to his own dignity, to abstain from harshness, nor drive the youth to despair: he was his own son--he must do what he could for him!--and so on! But he had little success. Anger and pride were too much for him. His breakfast was taken to him in the study, and there Hester found him, an hour after, with it untasted. He submitted to her embrace, but scarcely spoke, and asked nothing about Corney. Hester felt sadly chilled, and very hopeless. But she had begun to learn that one of the principal parts of faith is patience, and that the setting of wrong things right is so far from easy that not even God can do it all at once. But time is nothing to him who sees the end from the beginning; he does not grudge thousands of years of labor. The things he cares to do for us require our co-operation, and that makes the great difficulty: we are such poor fellow-workers with him! All that seems to deny his presence and labour only, necessitates a larger theory of that presence and labour. Yet time lies heavy on the young especially, and Hester left the room with a heavy heart. The only way in such stubbornnesses of the spirit, when we cannot feel that we are wrong, is to open our hearts, in silence and loneliness and prayer, to the influences from above--stronger for the right than any for the wrong; to seek the sweet enablings of the living light to see things as they are--as God sees them, who never is wrong because he has no selfishness, but is the living Love and the living Truth, without whom there would be no love and no truth.

I shall be hard up, though, before I part with this. Wynnie, I've actually got a finer diamond than Mr. Baddeley! It _is_ a beauty, if ever there was one!" My husband, with all his carelessness of dress and adornment, has almost a passion for stones. It is delightful to hear him talk about them. But he had never possessed a single gem before Lady Bernard made him this present. I believe he is child enough to be happier for it all his life. CHAPTER XXXVI. RETROSPECTIVE. Suddenly I become aware that I am drawing nigh the close of my monthly labors for a long year. Yet the year seems to have passed more rapidly because of this addition to my anxieties. Not that I haven't enjoyed the labor while I have been actually engaged in it, but the prospect of the next month's work would often come in to damp the pleasure of the present; making me fancy, as the close of each chapter drew near, that I should not have material for another left in my head. I heard a friend once remark that it is not the cares of to-day, but the cares of to-morrow, that weigh a man down. For the day we have the corresponding strength given, for the morrow we are told to trust; it is not ours yet. When I get my money for my work, I mean to give my husband a long holiday. I half think of taking him to Italy,--for of course I can do what I like with my own, whether husband or money,--and so have a hand in making him a still better painter. Incapable of imitation, the sight of any real work is always of great service to him, widening his sense of art, enlarging his idea of what can be done, rousing what part of his being is most in sympathy with it,--a part possibly as yet only half awake; in a word, leading him another step towards that simplicity which is at the root of all diversity, being so simple that it needs all diversity to set it forth. How impossible it seemed to me that I should ever write a book! Well or ill done, it is almost finished, for the next month is the twelfth. I must look back upon what I have written, to see what loose ends I may have left, and whether any allusion has not been followed up with a needful explanation; for this way of writing by portions--the only way in which I could have been persuaded to attempt the work, however--is unfavorable to artistic unity; an unnecessary remark, seeing that to such unity my work makes no pretensions.

I communicated nothing of what had happened to my uncle, because Mr Forest's custom was to read every letter before it left the house. But I longed for the day when I could tell the whole story to the great, simple-hearted man. CHAPTER XXIII. ONLY A LINK. Before my return to England, I found that familiarity with the sights and sounds of a more magnificent nature had removed my past life to a great distance. What had interested my childhood had strangely dwindled, yet gathered a new interest from its far-off and forsaken look. So much did my past wear to me now the look of something read in a story, that I am haunted with a doubt whether I may not have communicated too much of this appearance to my description of it, although I have kept as true as my recollections would enable me. The outlines must be correct: if the colouring be unreal, it is because of the haze which hangs about the memories of the time. The revisiting of old scenes is like walking into a mausoleum. Everything is a monument of something dead and gone. For we die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well! I returned with a clear conscience, for not only had I as yet escaped corruption, but for the greater part of the time at least I had worked well. If Mr Forest's letter which I carried to my uncle contained any hint intended to my disadvantage, it certainly fell dead on his mind; for he treated me with a consideration and respect which at once charmed and humbled me. One day as we were walking together over the fields, I told him the whole story of the loss of the weapon at Moldwarp Hall. Up to the time of my leaving for Switzerland I had shrunk from any reference to the subject, so painful was it to me, and so convinced was I that his sympathy would be confined to a compassionate smile and a few words of condolence. But glancing at his face now and then as I told the tale, I discovered more of interest in the play of his features than I had expected; and when he learned that it was absolutely gone from me, his face flushed with what seemed anger. For some moments after I had finished he was silent.

Speaking after our poor human fashions of thought--the only fashions possible to us--I imagine that God has never been contented to be alone even with the Son of his love, the prime and perfect idea of humanity, but that he has from the first willed and laboured to give existence to other creatures who should be blessed with his blessedness--creatures whom he is now and always has been developing into likeness with that Son--a likeness for long to be distant and small, but a likeness to be for ever growing: perhaps never one of them yet, though unspeakably blessed, has had even an approximate idea of the blessedness in store for him. Let no soul think that to say God undertook a hard labour in willing that many sons and daughters should be sharers of the divine nature, is to abate his glory! The greater the difficulty, the greater is the glory of him who does the thing he has undertaken--without shadow of compromise, with no half-success, but with a triumph of absolute satisfaction to innumerable radiant souls! He knew what it would cost!--not energy of will alone, or merely that utterance and separation from himself which is but the first of creation, though that may well itself be pain--but sore suffering such as we cannot imagine, and could only be God's, in the bringing out, call it birth or development, of the God-life in the individual soul--a suffering still renewed, a labour thwarted ever by that soul itself, compelling him to take, still at the cost of suffering, the not absolutely best, only the best possible means left him by the resistance of his creature. Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because he would give the best, and man will not take it. What Jesus did, was what the Father is always doing; the suffering he endured was that of the Father from the foundation of the world, reaching its climax in the person of his Son. God provides the sacrifice; the sacrifice is himself. He is always, and has ever been, sacrificing himself to and for his creatures. It lies in the very essence of his creation of them. The worst heresy, next to that of dividing religion and righteousness, is to divide the Father from the Son--in thought or feeling or action or intent; to represent the Son as doing that which the Father does not himself do. Jesus did nothing but what the Father did and does. If Jesus suffered for men, it was because his Father suffers for men; only he came close to men through his body and their senses, that he might bring their spirits close to his Father and their Father, so giving them life, and losing what could be lost of his own. He is God our Saviour: it is because God is our Saviour that Jesus is our Saviour.

With this enigmatical peroration the major made Hester a low bow, and handed her a sheet of foolscap, twice folded, and tied with a bit of white ribbon. She took it with a sweetly radiant curiosity. It was the title-deed of the house in Addison square. She gave a cry of joy, got up, threw her arms round majie's neck, and kissed him. "Aha!" said the major, "if I had been a young man now, I should not have had that! But I will not be conceited; I know what it is she means it for: the kiss collective of all the dirty men and women in her dear slums, glorified into that of an angel of God!" Hester was not a young lady given to weeping, but she did here break down and cry. Her long-cherished dream come true! She had no money, but that did not trouble her: there was always a way of doing when one was willing to begin small! This is indeed a divine law! There shall be no success to the man who is not willing to begin small. Small is strong, for it only can grow strong. Big at the outset is but bloated and weak. There are thousands willing to do great things for one willing to do a small thing; but there never was any truly great thing that did not begin small. In her delight Hester, having read the endorsement, handed the paper, without opening it, to Christopher, who sat next her, with the unconscious conviction that he would understand the delight it gave her. He took it and, with a look asking if he might, opened it. The major had known for some time that Mr. Raymount wanted to sell the house, and believed, from the way Hester spent herself in London, he could not rejoice her better than by purchasing it for her; so, just as it was, with everything as it stood in it, he made it his birthday-gift to her. "There is more here than you know," said Christopher, handing her back the paper. She opened it and saw something about a thousand pounds, for which again she gave joyous and loving thanks. But before the evening was over she learned that it was not a thousand pounds the dear majie had given her, but the thousand a year he had offered her if she would give up lord Gartley.

Some may think that, if he had devotion enough to surmount the vulgarities of her position and manners and ways of thought, his love could hardly be such as to yield so soon; but Eppy was not in herself vulgar. Many of even humbler education than she are far less really vulgar than some in the forefront of society. No doubt the conventionalities of a man like Forgue must have been sometimes shocked in familiar intercourse with one like Eppy; but while he was merely flirting with her, the very things that shocked would also amuse him--for I need hardly say he was not genuinely refined; and by and by the growing passion obscured them. There is no doubt that, had she been confronted as his wife with the common people of society, he would have become aware of many things as vulgarities which were only simplicities; but in the meantime she was no more vulgar to him than a lamb or a baby is vulgar, however unfit either for a Belgravian drawing-room. Vulgar, at the same time, he would have thought and felt her, but for the love that made him do her justice. Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes. But men who, having seen, become blind again, think they have had their eyes finally opened. For some time there was no change in Eppy’s behaviour but that she was not tearful as before. She continued diligent, never grumbled at the hardest work, and seemed desirous of making up for remissness in the past, when in truth she was trying to make up for something else in the present: she would atone for what she would not tell, by doing immediate duty with the greater devotion. But by and by she began occasionally to show, both in manner and countenance, a little of the old pertness, mingled with uneasiness. The phenomenon, however, was so intermittent and unpronounced, as to be manifest only to eyes familiar with her looks and ways: to Donal it was clear that the relation between her and Forgue was resumed. Yet she never went out in the evening except sent by her grandmother, and then she always came home even with haste--anxious, it might have seemed, to avoid suspicion.

Seed cast in its furrows, or green or sear, Will lift to the sun neither blade nor ear: Down it drops plumb Where no spring-times come, Nor needeth it any harrowing gear; Wheat nor poppy nor blade has been found Able to grow on the naked ground. FOR MY GRANDCHILD. III. Who is it that sleeps like a top all night, And wakes in the morning so fresh and bright That he breaks his bed as he gets up, And leaves it smashed like a china cup? IV. I've a very long nose, but what of that? It is not too long to lie on a mat! I have very big jaws, but never get fat: I don't go to church, and I'm not a church rat! I've a mouth in my middle my food goes in at, Just like a skate's--that's a fish that's a flat. In summer I'm seldom able to breathe, But when winter his blades in ice doth sheathe I swell my one lung, I look big and I puff, And I sometimes hiss.--There, that's enough! _BABY._ Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into here. Where did you get those eyes so blue? Out of the sky as I came through. What makes the light in them sparkle and spin? Some of the starry twinkles left in. Where did you get that little tear? I found it waiting when I got here. What makes your forehead so smooth and high? A soft hand stroked it as I went by. What makes your cheek like a warm white rose? I saw something better than any one knows. Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss? Three angels gave me at once a kiss. Where did you get this pearly ear? God spoke, and it came out to hear. Where did you get those arms and hands? Love made itself into bonds and bands. Feet, whence did you come, you darling things? From the same box as the cherubs' wings. How did they all just come to be you? God thought about me, and so I grew. But how did you come to us, you dear? God thought about you, and so I am here. _UP AND-DOWN._ The sun is gone down And the moon's in the sky But the sun will come up And the moon be laid by. The flower is asleep. But it is not dead, When the morning shines It will lift its head.

He turned white with dismay--then red with anger, and stood speechless. But he was quickly brought to himself by a sharp pinch under the shoulder blade from Kelpie’s long teeth: he had forgotten her, and she had taken the advantage. “Wha tellt ye that, Lizzy?” he said. “I’m no at leeberty to say, Ma’colm, but I’m sure it’s true, an’ my hert’s like to brak.” “Puir lassie!” said Malcolm, whose own trouble had never at any time rendered him insensible to that of others. “But is ’t onybody ’at _kens_ what he says?” he pursued. “Weel, I dinna jist richtly ken gien she _kens_, but I think she maun ha’e gude rizzon, or she wadna say as she says. Oh me! me! my bairnie ’ill be scornin’ me sair whan he comes to ken. Ma’colm, ye’re the only ane ’at disna luik doon upo’ me, an whan ye cam ower the tap o’ the Boar’s Tail, it was like an angel in a fire-flaucht, an’ something inside me said--_Tell ’im; tell ’im;_ an’ sae I bude to tell ye.” Malcolm was even too simple to feel flattered by the girl’s confidence, though to be trusted is a greater _compliment_ than to be loved. “Hearken, Lizzy!” he said. “I canna e’en think, wi’ this brute ready ilka meenute to ate me up. I maun tak her hame. Efter that, gien ye wad like to tell me onything, I s’ be at yer service. Bide aboot here--or, luik ye: here’s the key o’ yon door; come throu’ that intill the park--throu’ aneth the toll ro’d, ye ken. There ye’ll get into the lythe (_lee_) wi’ the bairnie; an’ I’ll be wi’ ye in a quarter o’ an hoor. It’ll tak me but twa meenutes to gang hame. Stoat ’ill put up the mere, and I’ll be back--I can du ’t in ten meenutes.” “Eh! dinna hurry for me, Ma’colm: I’m no worth it,” said Lizzy. But Malcolm was already at full speed along the top of the dune. “Lord preserve ’s!” cried Lizzy, when she saw him clear the brass swivel. “Sic a laad as that is! Eh, he maun ha’e a richt lass to lo’e him some day! It’s a’ ane to him, boat or beast. He wadna turn frae the deil himsel’. An syne he’s jist as saft ’s a deuk’s neck whan he speyks till a wuman or a bairn--ay, or an auld man aither!

There was no answer when she knocked at length at the door of the workroom, nor could she hear any sound of the spinning-wheel, and once more her heart sank within her, but only for one moment, as she turned and knocked at the other door. 'Come in,' answered the sweet voice of her grandmother, and Irene opened the door and entered, followed by Curdie. 'You darling!' cried the lady, who was seated by a fire of red roses mingled with white. 'I've been waiting for you, and indeed getting a little anxious about you, and beginning to think whether I had not better go and fetch you myself.' As she spoke she took the little princess in her arms and placed her upon her lap. She was dressed in white now, and looking if possible more lovely than ever. 'I've brought Curdie, grandmother. He wouldn't believe what I told him and so I've brought him.' 'Yes--I see him. He is a good boy, Curdie, and a brave boy. Aren't you glad you've got him out?' 'Yes, grandmother. But it wasn't very good of him not to believe me when I was telling him the truth.' 'People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.' 'Ah! yes, grandmother, I dare say. I'm sure you are right. But he'll believe now.' 'I don't know that,' replied her grandmother. 'Won't you, Curdie?' said Irene, looking round at him as she asked the question. He was standing in the middle of the floor, staring, and looking strangely bewildered. This she thought came of his astonishment at the beauty of the lady. 'Make a bow to my grandmother, Curdie,' she said. 'I don't see any grandmother,' answered Curdie rather gruffly. 'Don't see my grandmother, when I'm sitting in her lap?' exclaimed the princess. 'No, I don't,' reiterated Curdie, in an offended tone. 'Don't you see the lovely fire of roses--white ones amongst them this time?' asked Irene, almost as bewildered as he. 'No, I don't,' answered Curdie, almost sulkily. 'Nor the blue bed? Nor the rose-coloured counterpane?--Nor the beautiful light, like the moon, hanging from the roof?' 'You're making game of me, Your Royal Highness; and after what we have come through together this day, I don't think it is kind of you,' said Curdie, feeling very much hurt.

'But ma'am,' said Curdie, 'where is the good of knowing that there is such a difference, if you can never know where it is?' 'Now, Curdie, you must mind exactly what words I use, because although the right words cannot do exactly what I want them to do, the wrong words will certainly do what I do not want them to do. I did not say you can never know. When there is a necessity for your knowing, when you have to do important business with this or that man, there is always a way of knowing enough to keep you from any great blunder. And as you will have important business to do by and by, and that with people of whom you yet know nothing, it will be necessary that you should have some better means than usual of learning the nature of them. 'Now listen. Since it is always what they do, whether in their minds or their bodies, that makes men go down to be less than men, that is, beasts, the change always comes first in their hands--and first of all in the inside hands, to which the outside ones are but as the gloves. They do not know it of course; for a beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast the less he knows it. Neither can their best friends, or their worst enemies indeed, see any difference in their hands, for they see only the living gloves of them. But there are not a few who feel a vague something repulsive in the hand of a man who is growing a beast. 'Now here is what the rose-fire has done for you: it has made your hands so knowing and wise, it has brought your real hands so near the outside of your flesh gloves, that you will henceforth be able to know at once the hand of a man who is growing into a beast; nay, more--you will at once feel the foot of the beast he is growing, just as if there were no glove made like a man's hand between you and it. 'Hence of course it follows that you will be able often, and with further education in zoology, will be able always to tell, not only when a man is growing a beast, but what beast he is growing to, for you will know the foot--what it is and what beast's it is. According, then, to your knowledge of that beast will be your knowledge of the man you have to do with.

For now he lives, and life cannot hurt life; it can only hurt death, which needs and ought to be destroyed. God is life essential, eternal, and death cannot live in his sight; for death is corruption, and has no existence in itself, living only in the decay of the things of life. If then any child of the father finds that he is afraid before him, that the thought of God is a discomfort to him, or even a terror, let him make haste--let him not linger to put on any garment, but rush at once in his nakedness, a true child, for shelter from his own evil and God's terror, into the salvation of the Father's arms, the home whence he was sent that he might learn that it was home. What father being evil would it not win to see the child with whom he was vexed running to his embrace? how much more will not the Father of our spirits, who seeks nothing but his children themselves, receive him with open arms! Self, accepted as the law of self, is the one demon-enemy of life; God is the only Saviour from it, and from all that is not God, for God is life, and all that is not God is death. Life is the destruction of death, of all that kills, of all that is of death's kind. When John saw the glory of the Son of Man, he fell at his feet as one dead. In what way John saw him, whether in what we vaguely call a vision, or in as human a way as when he leaned back on his bosom and looked up in his face, I do not now care to ask: it would take all glorious shapes of humanity to reveal Jesus, and he knew the right way to show himself to John. It seems to me that such words as were spoken can have come from the mouth of no mere vision, can have been allowed to enter no merely tranced ear, that the mouth of the very Lord himself spoke them, and that none but the living present Jesus could have spoken or may be supposed to speak them; while plainly John received and felt them as a message he had to give again. There are also, strangely as the whole may affect us, various points in his description of the Lord's appearance which commend themselves even to our ignorance by their grandeur and fitness.

I suppose I shall have to marry him some day.” “Lady Lossie, do you want to make me hate you?” “Don’t be foolish, Raoul. It won’t be to-morrow--nor the next day. _Freuet euch des Lebens!_” “O Florimel! what is to come of this? Do you want to break my heart? --I hate to talk rubbish. You won’t kill me--you will only ruin my work, and possibly drive me mad.” Florimel drew close to his side, laid her hand on his arm, and looked in his face with a witching entreaty. “We have the present, Raoul,” she said. “So has the butterfly,” answered Lenorme; “but I had rather be the caterpillar with a future.--Why don’t you put a stop to the man’s lovemaking? He can’t love you or any woman. He does not know what love means. It makes me ill to hear him when he thinks he is paying you irresistible compliments. They are so silly! so mawkish! Good heavens, Florimel! can you imagine that smile every day and always? Like the rest of his class he seems to think himself perfectly justified in making fools of women. _I_ want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when he thought of you first. I want you to be my embodied vision of life, that I may for ever worship at your feet--live in you, die with you: such bliss, even were there nothing beyond, would be enough for the heart of a God to bestow.” “Stop, stop, Raoul; I’m not worthy of such love,” said Florimel, again laying her hand on his arm. “I do wish for your sake I had been born a village-girl.” “If you had been, then I might have wished for your sake that I had been born a marquis. As it is I would rather be a painter than any nobleman in Europe--that is, with you to love me. Your love is my patent of nobility. But I may glorify what you love--and tell you that I can confer something on you also--what none of your noble admirers can.--God forgive me! you will make me hate them all!” “Raoul, this won’t do at all,” said Florimel, with the authority that should belong only to the one in the right. And indeed for the moment she felt the dignity of restraining a too impetuous passion. “You will spoil everything.

He would not presume beyond what was given him--as if God were letting things go wrong, and he must come in to prevent them! He would not set blunted or ill tempered tools to the finest work of the universe! CHAPTER XLIX. AN ARRANGEMENT. Hester had not yet gone to see Miss Dasomma because of the small-pox. Second causes are God's as much as first, and Christ made use of them as his father's way. It were a sad world indeed if God's presence were only interference, that is, miracle. The roundabout common ways of things are just as much his as the straight, miraculous ones--I incline to think more his, in the sense that they are plainly the ways he prefers. In all things that are, he is--present even in the evil we bring into the world, to foil it and bring good out of it. We are always disbelieving in him because things do not go as we intend and desire them to go. We forget that God has larger ends, even for us, than we can see, so his plans do not fit ours. If God were not only to hear our prayers, as he does ever and always, but to answer them as we want them answered, he would not be God our Saviour, but the ministering genius of our destruction. But now Hester thought she might visit her friend. She had much to say to her and ask of her. First she told her of herself and lord Gartley. Miss Dasomma threw her arms about her, and broke into a flood of congratulation. Hester looked a little surprised, and was indeed a little annoyed at the vehemence of her pleasure. Miss Dasomma hastened to excuse herself. "My dear," she said, "the more I saw of that man, the more I thought and the more I heard about him, his ways, and his surroundings, the more I marvelled you should ever have taken him for other than the most wordly, shallow, stunted creature. It was the very impossibility of your understanding the mode of being of such a man that made it possible for him to gain on you. Believe me, if you had married him, you would have been sick of him--forgive the vulgar phrase--yes, and hopeless of him, in six weeks." "There was more and better in him than you imagine," returned Hester, hurt that her friend should think so badly of the man she loved, but by no means sure that she was wrong.