that thrills all the most delicate
fibres of the human spirit, he cannot stammer out even the most
faltering solution, the smallest word of comfort or hope. He leaves
the problem, where he took it up, in the mighty hands of God.

And thus the play stands as the supreme memorial of the tortured
spirit. The sad soul of the prince seems like an orange-banded bee,
buzzing against the glass of some closed chamber-window, wondering
heavily what is the clear yet palpable medium that keeps it, in spite
of all its efforts, from re-entering the sunny paradise of tree and
flower, that lies so close at hand, and that is yet unattainable; until
one wonders why the supreme Lord of the place cannot put forth a
finger, and release the ineffectual spirit from its fruitless pain. As
the play gathers and thickens to its crisis, one experiences--and this
is surely a test of the highest art--the poignant desire to explain, to
reason, to comfort, to relieve; even if one cannot help, one longs at
least to utter the yearning of the heart, the intense sympathy that one
feels for the multitude of sorrows that oppress this laden spirit; to
assuage if only for a moment, by an answering glance of love, the fire
that burns in those stricken eyes. And one must bear away from the
story not only the intellectual satisfaction, the emotional excitement,
but a deep desire to help, as far as a man can, the woes of spirits
who, all the world over, are in the grip of these dreary agonies.

And that, after all, is the secret of the art that deals with the
presentment of sorrow; with the art that deals with pure beauty the end
is plain enough; we may stay our hearts upon it, plunge with gratitude
into the pure stream, and recognise it for a sweet and wholesome gift
of God; but the art that makes sorrow beautiful, what are we to do with
that? We may learn to bear, we may learn to hope that there is, in the
mind of God, if we could but read it, a region where both beauty and
sadness are one; and meanwhile it may teach us to let our heart go out,
in love and pity, to all who are bound upon their pilgrimage in
heaviness, and passing uncomforted through the dark valley.

XX

A Sealed Spirit

A few weeks ago I was staying with a friend of mine, a clergyman in the
country. He told me one evening a very sad story about one of his
parishioners. This was a man who had been a clerk in a London Bank,
whose eyesight had failed, and who had at last become