own. For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one's
feeling, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities
move on! Still must we eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again,--still
bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions,--pursue, in short,
a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold
mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has
fled.

All the interests and hopes of St. Clare's life had unconsciously wound
themselves around this child. It was for Eva that he had managed his
property; it was for Eva that he had planned the disposal of his time;
and, to do this and that for Eva,--to buy, improve, alter, and arrange,
or dispose something for her,--had been so long his habit, that now she
was gone, there seemed nothing to be thought of, and nothing to be done.

True, there was another life,--a life which, once believed in, stands as
a solemn, significant figure before the otherwise unmeaning ciphers of
time, changing them to orders of mysterious, untold value. St. Clare
knew this well; and often, in many a weary hour, he heard that slender,
childish voice calling him to the skies, and saw that little hand
pointing to him the way of life; but a heavy lethargy of sorrow lay on
him,--he could not arise. He had one of those natures which could better
and more clearly conceive of religious things from its own perceptions
and instincts, than many a matter-of-fact and practical Christian. The
gift to appreciate and the sense to feel the finer shades and relations
of moral things, often seems an attribute of those whose whole life
shows a careless disregard of them. Hence Moore, Byron, Goethe, often
speak words more wisely descriptive of the true religious sentiment,
than another man, whose whole life is governed by it. In such minds,
disregard of religion is a more fearful treason,--a more deadly sin.

St. Clare had never pretended to govern himself by any religious
obligation; and a certain fineness of nature gave him such an
instinctive view of the extent of the requirements of Christianity, that
he shrank, by anticipation, from what he felt would be the exactions
of his own conscience, if he once did resolve to assume them. For,
so inconsistent is human nature, especially in the ideal, that not to
undertake a thing at all seems better than to undertake and come short.

Still St. Clare was, in many respects, another man. He read his
little Eva's B