roze.
God! fight we not within a cursed world,
Whose very air teems thick with leagued fiends--
Each word we speak has infinite effects--
Each soul we pass must go to heaven or hell--
And this our one chance through eternity
To drop and die, like dead leaves in the brake,
Or like the meteor stone, though whelmed itself,
Kindle the dry moors into fruitful blaze--
And yet we live too fast!
Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad, if thou wilt:
Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven,
And that thy last deed ere the judgment-day.
When all's done, nothing's done. There's rest above--
Below let work be death, if work be love! [Exeunt.]

SCENE VIII

A Chamber in the Castle. Counts Walter, Hugo, etc., Abbot, and
Knights.

Count Hugo. I can't forget it, as I am a Christian man. To ask for
a stoup of beer at breakfast, and be told there was no beer allowed
in the house--her Ladyship had given all the malt to the poor.

Abbot. To give away the staff of life, eh?

C. Hugo. The life itself, Sir, the life itself. All that barley,
that would have warmed many an honest fellow's coppers, wasted in
filthy cakes.

Abbot. The parent of seraphic ale degraded into plebeian dough!
Indeed, Sir, we have no right to lessen wantonly the amount of human
enjoyment!

C. Wal. In heaven's name, what would you have her do, while the
people were eating grass?

C. Hugo. Nobody asked them to eat it; nobody asked them to be there
to eat it; if they will breed like rabbits, let them feed like
rabbits, say I--I never married till I could keep a wife.

Abbot. Ah, Count Walter! How sad to see a man of your sense so led
away by his feelings! Had but this dispensation been left to work
itself out, and evolve the blessing implicit in all heaven's
chastenings! Had but the stern benevolences of providence remained
undisturbed by her ladyship's carnal tenderness--what a boon had
this famine been!

C. Wal. How then, man?

Abbot. How many a poor soul would be lying--Ah, blessed thought!--
in Abraham's bosom; who must now toil on still in this vale of
tears!--Pardon this pathetic dew--I cannot but feel as a Churchman.

3d Count. Look at it in this way, Sir. There are too many of us--
too many--Where you have one job you have three workmen. Why, I
threw three hundred acres into pasture myself this year--it saves
money, and risk, and trouble, and tithes.

C. Wal. What would you say to the Princess, who talks of breaking
up