120 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



than the aphorisms of the wise, and then unclasp our 

 necks, close their eyes and return to heaven, are they 

 not the very person of beauty revealed in the flesh? 



I remember, I shall always remember, the heart- 

 moan of a dear friend, a stalwart friend, but touched 

 with the tenderness which bereavement brings, sheddinor 

 his tears over the buried remains of his little daughter: 

 " She was not transformed,'' he said, " she was translated. 

 She was always an angel ; how she came from heaven I 

 never knew, but she was amongst us; she spoke our lan- 

 guage, but always with a meaning moi'e than the words 

 conveyed. We gave her a name, but she was never called 

 by it. She named herself. Undoubtedly she remembered 

 the name she bore in heaven. There was always a fra- 

 grance of heaven about it. No one could take it upon 

 his lips but in love. She bears that name in heaven 

 again. In my nightly roamings," he said, "through that 

 other world, which is not beyond the stars, but just be- 

 hind the veil of life, I have heard that name uttered by 

 gentle lips, sisterly lips, in whose every accent I rec- 

 ognized voices I had once known in my waking hours." 



Oh, there is a beauty in tears, whether of the widow 

 pleading with heaven, or the stout heart crushed in a 

 mysterious bereavement. 



The world is redundant in beauty. Human life is radi- 

 ant in beauty and redolent of heaven; and the invisible 

 world, whose threshold only thought can cross, and whose 

 fabric is built of the eternal truth, is the apocalypse of 

 the beautiful to the eye of intelligence. Wheresoever 

 beauty abides, there is cause for human joy. I love to 

 forget the toils and sorrows of life, exultant in the bliss 

 of glimpses which come from a life on the sunny side of 



