THE DREAMER'S MISSION. 239 



Years had passed away since death had deprived him of 

 this only friend. He was now fast approaching the season 

 of manhood, and yet he was as much a child in heart as when 

 he was wont to rest his head on his mother's bosom, while he 

 charmed her ear with his boyish dreams of poetic existence. 

 Neither thought nor action characterized the life of the dream- 

 ing youth. Vague reverie, that sweet idlesse of the mind, had 

 become a habitude of his being. To the commonplace and 

 practical people by whom he was surrounded, he seemed an 

 idle, fanciful, unsocial being, incapable alike of strong affec- 

 tions or of active usefulness. Even the wisest and most 

 charitable saw in him only the morbid and feeble-minded 

 dreamer, for whom it needed little skill in prophecy to predict a 

 sorrowful doom. 



" Let them not despise thy youth ;" was the exhortation of 

 St. Paul when he set Timothy as a teacher over the people. 

 How often might a similar precept be given to those who 

 contemn that which they cannot comprehend ! If men would 

 but remember that every human creature, however feeble, how- 

 ever humble, has an appointed mission, — a mission as various 

 as the various minds to which it is intrusted, — they would have 

 charity for all who live, — they would scorn nothing but base- 

 ness, — they would hate nothing but sinfulness, — they would 

 despise nothing but falsehood. We cannot read the inscrutable 

 decrees of Providence ; we cannot see into the deep designs of 

 of that Power which watches alike " The crash of empires, 

 and the sparrow's fall," but if we look with the clear eye of 

 Faith, we can behold much to satisfy the doubts and fears of 



