xliii 



" The wings of man's life are plumed with the 

 feathers of death," now under the sceptre of Vic- 

 toria, as under that of Elizabeth : and the dear 

 Son, whose advent brought joy in the present, with 

 hope in the future, has followed his Father to the 

 silent land, leaving the home he made so bright, 

 lonely and desolate. 



From the earliest years, that dear Son's love for 

 all God's creatures, his desire to see them happy, 

 was intense ; his whole being seemed pervaded with 

 the thought so exquisitely expressed by the Vicar 

 of Christ Church, Hampstead, in his lecture on 

 Milton's Paradise Lost, where he says : 



" In the scenery of Paradise, the birth-place of 

 our race, the joy is as the reflection of our 

 Creator's smile. 



" We breathe everywhere the sense of the divine 

 satisfaction when ' God saw everything that He had 

 made, and behold, it was very good/ 



c The intense felicity of creature existence is so 



d 



