604) A Voice from the Departed. [Deel 
Ages had passed: since the: moment when her beloved ' ‘spas ome 
flight - ere her spiritual presence was revealed to me. ok ylblod 
Two objects) alone were left for me—and they were all in ‘alls I saw 
them left—left alone \in a cold bleak world, with the ee around 
Oni oan these qiivori 91d tot Jon 
* Poor unfledged'— | omoidaeg Da 
“* Have never winged from view o’ th’ nest; ‘nor eae JS DOTS Wi 
* What air’s from home,” aw 19 sa 
and bitterly grieved for their condition. EEC Ee er 
’ Guardian spirit I could not be; I was like a prisoner caine in sai 
eile: with only a small wicket through which to catch a glimpse of some 
sweet land of promise. Through the long day, and the long, long night, 
T'watched my children below—and when I saw the approach of evil, T 
had no shield under which to shelter them—I had no warning voice ‘to 
utter—I had no consolation for them in the midst of their youtig 
sorrows. 
Although aloof, and indifferent to the course of mundane concerns, 
yet, in the general nature of my perceptions, I saw the awful changes 
daily working to their developments in the kingdoms of the world— 
I saw old things and systems passing away, and new ones assuming their 
places. I saw the dethroned monarch and the iron-fronted usur per; the 
destruction of kingdoms and the building of new dynasties—the sacrifice 
of the innocent and the thirst of the ambitious—I saw hypocrisy kneeling 
in profane mockery at half-ruined altars—and I saw the dusk dis- 
pensers of ‘all evil thoughts and passions mingling their wings with the 
dove-pinions of peace and i innocence, and love and joy, and gentle con- 
solation for wounded and broken hearts. 
Often did I sigh for the privilege of communing with the spirits of 
- the earlier days, the great master-spirits of their time. Bards, philoso- 
phers, and the patriarchs of days when pastoral life was not a fable— 
an epithet without a corresponding object. But this was denied to me, 
and my spiritual eye bent only on the world and its moving creatures. 
I was amidst their vanities and their greatnesses, but not of them. The 
great died and were buried—the poor perished also—-and 'I saw their 
dust crumble and wither as mine and my fond wife’s had done, and I 
saw the thin blades of grass and the flowers of spring flourish over the 
places of their repose. I saw the spendthrift heirs fixing up the hatch- 
ments of the dead with gloomy features, and the outward trappings of 
deep woe, and I had power to read their hearts: the images of the 
departed had no lodgment there. The feast, the revel, the wild flow 
of animal spirits, and the fulsome adulation of vampire friends, eddied 
round the survivor, and the mime who erewhile had worn the. gloomy 
weeds of sorrow doffed the unfitting garment, and swaggered in his own 
motle 
A Srahige was wrought. Mourning, and woe, and wrath, and r ‘pine, 
and civil discord, were in the land—the angels were pouring out heir 
phials. Men died by their brothers’ swords—famine, and plague, and 
pestilence dealt amongst the survivors—and the insatiate grave'r reeked 
with its victims, and the dull stench of death rose from the’ earth. ONEee 
Where were my children in the dread conflict? My boy ‘had | town 
to manhood—to full, strong, towering manhood—and his great heart leapt 
with its wild emotions. Gladly would I have resumed my fo nm of flesh, 
had the power been given me, to have stood before’ him in’ be din‘ and 
