where God is, in whom we live,
and move, and have our being, and that is everywhere. Do you wish Him to
be any nearer?

_National Sermons_.

. . . Oh, my Saviour!
My God! where art Thou? That's but a tale about Thee,
That crucifix above--it does but show Thee
As Thou wast once, but not as Thou art now. . . .

_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iv. Scene i.

June.

Three o'clock, upon a still, pure, Midsummer morning. . . . The white
glare of dawn, which last night hung high in the north-west, has
travelled now to the north-east, and above the wooded wall of the hills
the sky is flushing with rose and amber. A long line of gulls goes
wailing inland; the rooks come cawing and sporting round the corner at
Landcross, while high above them four or five herons flap solemnly along
to find their breakfast on the shallows. The pheasants and partridges
are clucking merrily in the long wet grass; every copse and hedgerow
rings with the voice of birds; but the lark, who has been singing since
midnight in the "blank height of the dark," suddenly hushes his carol and
drops headlong among the corn, as a broad-winged buzzard swings from some
wooded peak into the abyss of the valley, and hangs high-poised above the
heavenward songster. The air is full of perfume; sweet clover, new-mown
hay, the fragrant breath of kine, the dainty scent of sea-weed, and fresh
wet sand. Glorious day, glorious place, "bridal of earth and sky,"
decked well with bridal garments, bridal perfumes, bridal songs.

_Westward Ho_! chap. xii.

Open Thou mine Eyes. June 1.

I have wandered in the mountains mist-bewildered,
And now a breeze comes, and the veil is lifted;
And priceless flowers, o'er which I trod unheeding,
Gleam ready for my grasp.

_Saint's Tragedy_, Act i. Scene ii.
1847.

The Spirit of Romance. June 2.

Some say that the spirit of romance is dead. The spirit of romance will
never die as long as there is a man left to see that the world might and
can be better, happier, wiser, fairer in all things than it is now. The
spirit of romance will never die as long as a man has faith in God to
believe that the world will actually be better and fairer than it is now,
as long as men have faith, however weak, to believe in the romance of all
romances, in the wonder of all wonders, in that of which all poets'
dreams have been but childish hints and dim forefeelings--even

"That one divine far-off event
Towards which