wrong, oh
my God! to desire to offer her to Thee? Dost thou remember, Minna,
what I said to thee up there?" he added, pointing to the summit of the
Ice-Cap.

"He is terrible again," thought Minna, trembling with fear.

The voice of the Sieg accompanied the thoughts of the three beings
united on this platform of projecting rock, but separated in soul by the
abysses of the Spiritual World.

"Seraphitus! teach me," said Minna in a silvery voice, soft as the
motion of a sensitive plant, "teach me how to cease to love you. Who
could fail to admire you; love is an admiration that never wearies."

"Poor child!" said Seraphitus, turning pale; "there is but one whom thou
canst love in that way."

"Who?" asked Minna.

"Thou shalt know hereafter," he said, in the feeble voice of a man who
lies down to die.

"Help, help! he is dying!" cried Minna.

Wilfrid ran towards them. Seeing Seraphita as she lay on a fragment of
gneiss, where time had cast its velvet mantle of lustrous lichen and
tawny mosses now burnished in the sunlight, he whispered softly, "How
beautiful she is!"

"One other look! the last that I shall ever cast upon this nature in
travail," said Seraphitus, rallying her strength and rising to her feet.

She advanced to the edge of the rocky platform, whence her eyes took in
the scenery of that grand and glorious landscape, so verdant, flowery,
and animated, yet so lately buried in its winding-sheet of snow.

"Farewell," she said, "farewell, home of Earth, warmed by the fires of
Love; where all things press with ardent force from the centre to the
extremities; where the extremities are gathered up, like a woman's hair,
to weave the mysterious braid which binds us in that invisible ether to
the Thought Divine!

"Behold the man bending above that furrow moistened with his tears,
who lifts his head for an instant to question Heaven; behold the woman
gathering her children that she may feed them with her milk; see him
who lashes the ropes in the height of the gale; see her who sits in the
hollow of the rocks, awaiting the father! Behold all they who stretch
their hands in want after a lifetime spent in thankless toil. To all
peace and courage, and to all farewell!

"Hear you the cry of the soldier, dying nameless and unknown? the wail
of the man deceived who weeps in the desert? To them peace and courage;
to all farewell!

"Farewell, you who die for the kings of the earth! Farewell, ye people
without a coun