atmosphere the particles that make the thunderbolt, and falls like a
devouring scourge upon the nations. Europe is at an epoch when she

awaits the new Messiah who shall destroy society and remake it. She
can no longer believe except in him who crushes her under foot. The

day is at hand when poets and historians will justify me, exalt me,
and borrow my ideas, mine! And all the while my triumph will be a

jest, written in blood, the jest of my vengeance! But not here,
Seraphita; what I see in the North disgusts me. Hers is a mere blind

force; I thirst for the Indies! I would rather fight a selfish,
cowardly, mercantile government. Besides, it is easier to stir the

imagination of the peoples at the feet of the Caucasus than to argue
with the intellect of the icy lands which here surround me. Therefore

am I tempted to cross the Russian steps and pour my triumphant human
tide through Asia to the Ganges, and overthrow the British rule. Seven

men have done this thing before me in other epochs of the world. I
will emulate them. I will spread Art like the Saracens, hurled by

Mohammed upon Europe. Mine shall be no paltry sovereignty like those
that govern to-day the ancient provinces of the Roman empire,

disputing with their subjects about a customs right! No, nothing can
bar my way! Like Genghis Khan, my feet shall tread a third of the

globe, my hand shall grasp the throat of Asia like Aurung-Zeb. Be my
companion! Let me seat thee, beautiful and noble being, on a throne! I

do not doubt success, but live within my heart and I am sure of it."
"I have already reigned," said Seraphita, coldly.

The words fell as the axe of a skilful woodman falls at the root of a
young tree and brings it down at a single blow. Men alone can

comprehend the rage that a woman excites in the soul of a man when,
after showing her his strength, his power, his wisdom, his

superiority, the capricious creature bends her head and says, "All
that is nothing"; when, unmoved, she smiles and says, "Such things are

known to me," as though his power were nought.
"What!" cried Wilfrid, in despair, "can the riches of art, the riches

of worlds, the splendors of a court--"
She stopped him by a single inflexion of her lips, and said, "Beings

more powerful than you have offered me far more."
"Thou hast no soul," he cried,--"no soul, if thou art not persuaded by

the thought of comforting a great man, who is willing now to sacrifice
all things to live beside thee in a little house on the shores of a

lake."
"But," she said, "I am loved with a boundless love."

"By whom?" cried Wilfrid, approaching Seraphita with a frenzied
movement, as if to fling her into the foaming basin of the Sieg.

She looked at him and slowly extended her arm, pointing to Minna, who
now sprang towards her, fair and glowing and lovely as the flowers she

held in her hand.
"Child!" said Seraphitus, advancing to meet her.

Wilfrid remained where she left him, motionless as the rock on which
he stood, lost in thought, longing to let himself go into the torrent

of the Sieg, like the fallen trees which hurried past his eyes and
disappeared in the bosom of the gulf.

"I gathered them for you," said Minna, offering the bunch of
saxifrages to the being she adored. "One of them, see, this one," she

added, selecting a flower, "is like that you found on the Falberg."
Seraphitus looked alternately at the flower and at Minna.

"Why question me? Dost thou doubt me?"
"No," said the young girl, "my trust in you is infinite. You are more

beautiful to look upon than this glorious nature, but your mind
surpasses in intellect that of all humanity. When I have been with you

I seem to have prayed to God. I long--"
"For what?" said Seraphitus, with a glance that revealed to the young

girl the vast distance which separated them.
"To suffer in your stead."

"Ah, dangerous being!" cried Seraphitus in his heart. "Is it 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 velvetmantle 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 gloriouslandscape, 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 country and ye countries without a people, each, with a
mutual want. Above all, farewell to Thee who knew not where to lay Thy

head, Exile divine! Farewell, mothers beside your dying sons!
Farewell, ye Little Ones, ye Feeble, ye Suffering, you whose sorrows I

have so often borne! Farewell, all ye who have descended into the
sphere of Instinct that you may suffer there for others!

"Farewell, ye mariners who seek the Orient through the thick darkness
of your abstractions, vast as principles! Farewell, martyrs of

thought, led by thought into the presence of the True Light. Farewell,
regions of study where mine ears can hear the plaint of genius

neglected and insulted, the sigh of the patient scholar to whom
enlightenment comes too late!

"I see the angelic choir, the wafting of perfumes, the incense of the
heart of those who go their way consoling, praying, imparting

celestial balm and living light to suffering souls! Courage, ye choir
of Love! you to whom the peoples cry, 'Comfort us, comfort us, defend

us!' To you courage! and farewell!
"Farewell, ye granite rocks that shall bloom a flower; farewell,

flower that becomes a dove; farewell, dove that shalt be woman;
farewell, woman, who art Suffering, man, who art Belief! Farewell, you

who shall be all love, all prayer!"
Broken with fatigue, this inexplicable being leaned for the first time

on Wilfrid and on Minna to be taken home. Wilfrid and Minna felt the
shock of a mysteriouscontact in and through the being who thus

connected them. They had scarcely advanced a few steps when David met
them, weeping. "She will die," he said, "why have you brought her

hither?"
The old man raised her in his arms with the vigor of youth and bore