WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 339 



poet ? Is there record kept anywhere of fancies con- 

 ceived, beautiful, unborn ? Some day will they assume 

 form in some yet undeveloped light? They say our 

 words, once out of our lips, go travelling in omne cevum, 

 reverberating for ever and ever. If our words, why not 

 our thoughts ? If the Has Been, why not the Might 

 Have Been ? Some day our spirits may be permitted 

 to walk in galleries of fancies more wondrous and beau- 

 tiful than any achieved works which at present we see, 

 and our minds to behold and delight in masterpieces 

 which poets' and artists' minds have fathered and con- 

 ceived only.' One has difficulty in realizing that it was 

 the giant hand of Thackeray which traced these tender 

 pencillings of fancy. It is no fancy, however, that, in 

 the future to which Christians look forward, neither will 

 the energies of the soul be paralyzed, nor the definite 

 lines of personality be effaced. So long as Hugh Mil- 

 ler's personality retains its mould, he will think with 

 love of Scotland, and be wafted in memory to her pine- 

 clad hills and craggy shores ; and if the converse of 

 friends beyond the bourne has any analogy to that of 

 friends on earth, he may vary the note of celestial felicity 

 by dwelling on the wonders and beauties of that great 

 work which he was not permitted to achieve on earth. 



