ent, and above all, how unavailing. "Would," he
exclaims, "that the past could be recalled, and they were boys again
together! It would be so easy then to endure!"

"MEMORABILIA" shows the perspective of memory in a tribute to the poet
Shelley. His fugitive contact with a commonplace life, like the trace of
an eagle's passage across the moor, leaves an illumined spot amidst
blankness.

"THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER" depicts the emotions of a ride, which a finally
dismissed lover has been allowed to take with his beloved. He has vainly
passed his youth in loving her. But as this boon is granted, she lies
for a moment on his breast. "She might have loved him more; she might
also have liked him less." As they ride away side by side, a sense of
resignation comes over him. His life is not alone in its failure. Every
one strives. Few or none succeed. The best success proves itself to be
shallow. And if it were otherwise--if the goal could be reached on
earth--what care would one take for heaven? Then the peace which is in
him absorbs the consciousness of reality. He fancies himself riding with
the loved one till the end of time; and he asks himself if his destined
heaven may not prove to be this.

"A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL" describes the rendering of the last honours to
one whose life has consumed itself in the pursuit of knowledge. The
knowledge pursued has been pedantic and minute, but for him it
represented a mighty truth; and he has refused to live, in the world's
sense, till he had mastered that truth, co-extensive, as he believed it,
with life everlasting. Like Sordello, though in a different way, he
would KNOW before he allowed himself to BE. He would realize the Whole;
he would not discount it. His disciples are bearing him to a
mountain-top, that the loftiness of his endeavour may be symbolized by
his last resting-place. He is to lie

"where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened." (vol. v. p. 159.)

where the new morning for which he waited will figuratively first break
upon him.

"JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION" is a glowing and fantastic description
of the privileges of the "elect," cast in the form of a monologue, and
illustrated in the person of the speaker. Johannes Agricola was a German
reformer of the sixteenth century, and alleged founder of the sect of
the Antinomians: a class of Christians who extended the Low Church
doctrine of the insufficiency of good w