Walk thou the heights as walked the old Greeks when
They talked to austere gods, nor turned to men.
Teach thou the order of the singing stars.
Behold, in mad disorder these are set,
And yet they sing in ceaseless harmonies.
They spill as jewels spilt through space. They fret
The souls of men who measure melodies
As they would measure slimy deeps of seas.

Take comfort, O uncommon soul. Yet pray
Lest ye grow proud in such exalted worth.
Let no man reckon he excels. I say
The laws of compensation compass earth,
And no man gains without some equal loss:
Each ladder round of fame becomes a rod,
And he who lives must die upon a cross.
The stars are far, but flowers bless the sod,
And he who has the least of man has most of God.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

MADCAP VIOLET.

BY WILLIAM BLACK.

CHAPTER XLIV.

JOY AND FEAR.

Was this man mad, that he, an invalid, propped up in his chair, and
scarcely able to move a wine-glass out of his way, should play pranks
with the whole created order of things, tossing about solar systems as
if they were no more than juggler's balls, and making universal systems
of philosophy jump through hoops as if he were a lion tamer in a den?
These poor women did not know where to catch him. Violet used to say
that he was like a prism, taking the ordinary daylight of life and
splitting it up into a thousand gay and glancing colors. That was all
very well as a spectacular exhibition; but how when he was apparently
instructing them in some serious matter? Was it fair to these tender
creatures who had so lovingly nursed him, that he should assume the airs
of a teacher, and gravely lead out his trusting disciples into the
desert places of the earth, when his only object was to get them into a
bog and then suddenly reveal himself as a will-o'-the-wisp, laughing at
them with a fiendish joy?

What, for example, was all this nonsense about the land question--about
the impossibility of settling it in England so long as the superstitious
regard for land existed in the English mind? They were quite ready to
believe him. They deprecated that superstition most sincerely. They
could not understand why a moneyed Englishman's first impulse was to go
and buy land; they could give no reason for the delusion existing in the
bosom of every Englishman that he, if no one else, could make money out
of the occupation of a