welling on thy gentle face,
Its twilight smile, its tender grace,
We fill the shadowy years to be
With what had been thy destiny.
And still, amid our sorrow's pain,
We feel the loss is yet our gain;
For through the death we know the life,
Its gold in thought, its steel in strife,--
And so with reverent kiss we say
Adieu! O Bayard of our day!

HINDRANCE.

Much that is in itself undesirable occurs in obedience to a general law
which is not only desirable, but of infinite necessity and benefit. It
is not desirable that Topper and Macaulay should be read by tens of
thousands, and Wilkinson only by tens. It is not desirable that a
narrow, selfish, envious Cecil, who could never forgive his noblest
contemporaries for failing to be hunchbacks like himself, should steer
England all his life as it were with supreme hand, and himself sail on
the topmost tide of fortune; while the royal head of Raleigh goes to the
block, and while Bacon, with his broad and bountiful nature,--Bacon,
one of the two or three greatest and humanest statesmen ever born to
England, and one of the friendliest men toward mankind ever born into
the world,--dies in privacy and poverty, bequeathing his memory "to
foreign nations and the next ages." But it is wholly desirable that
he who would consecrate himself to excellence in art or life should
sometimes be compelled to make it very clear to himself whether it be
indeed excellence that he covets, or only plaudits and pounds sterling.
So when we find our purest wishes perpetually hindered, not only in the
world around us, but even in our own bosoms, many of the particular
facts may indeed merit reproach, but the general fact merits, on the
contrary, gratitude and gratulation. For were our best wishes not, nor
ever, hindered, sure it is that the still better wishes of destiny
in our behalf would be hindered yet worse. Sure it is, I say, that
Hindrance, both outward and inward, comes to us not through any
improvidence or defect of benignity in Nature, but in answer to our
need, and as part of the best bounty which enriches our days. And to
make this indubitably clear, let us hasten to meditate that simple and
central law which governs this matter and at the same time many others.

And the law is, that every definite action is conditioned upon a
definite resistance, and is impossible without it. We walk in virtue of
the earth's resistance to the foot, and are unable to tread the