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ortion; but the proportion was just as much sacrificed, indeed more sacrificed, by ignoring the facts. Neither was he at all afraid of any undue preponderance of the morbid element in his contemplations. He took far too deep a delight in the beautiful and gracious sights and sounds of earth for that; and the conclusion that he drew, as he turned away, was that a suspension of judgment in the face of an insoluble mystery was the only course; to leave the windows of the soul open to every impression, to every fact, whether it was the voice and glance of humanity, the sweetness of art and sound, the appeal of ancient buildings, the waving of tall trees, the faces of bright flowers, the songs of lively birds in the thicket--ay, and the intimations of death and decay as well, all that was ugly and wretched in humanity, the coarse song from the alehouse, the slatternly woman about her weary work, the crying of a child that had been punished, the foul oozings of the stockyard. These were all as real, as true impressions as the others. To strike some balance, neither to forget the ideal in the real, or to lose sight of the real in the ideal, that was his task. And the consolation, though a stern one, lay in the fact that, dark and bitter as the mystery was at one point, gracious and glowing as it was at another, yet it was certainly _there_. Concrete and abstract, the impressions of sense, the intuitions of the spirit, each and all had their part. In this life, this swift interchange of darkness and light, of sunshine and gloom, he might never approach the secret--nay, he did not even hope that he would. But at least he could draw a few steps nearer, and with a humble heart he would wait for the glory that should be revealed, or for the silence and darkness that it might be would close upon him. For whatever should be the end, Hugh had no doubt that there was certainly behind life a mind and a will, to which it was not only no mystery, but a truth simple, obvious and plain; for him, his duty was to use both observation and imagination; not to let the imagination outrun the observation, but to mark all that he could, and infer what he could; while at the same time he felt equally sure that he was not to be a mere observer, blindly registering impressions, content to analyse difficulties. Better than that was to repose an ardent faith in his intuitions; but each alike, without the aid of the other, was perilous and insecur
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