THE INNER LIFE. 
Ill 
or pestilence, and droops and fades as in the hot and 
parching air of a sirocco: but with Nature, the true old 
love of innumerable ages comes dawning upon it, and it 
grows and expands in the opening of a new future, a 
future teeming with truth and beauty; and finds in this 
new realm of thought and perception an insight into its 
highest tendencies. In the buzz and distracting whirl 
of the world, the only hope of satisfaction seems to be 
in sorrow, for there we expect to meet with “ sharp 
peaks and edges of truth ” but in Nature all is per¬ 
petual jubilee and song, and every feature wears the 
aspect of festive hilarity,—pure, ennobling, and true. 
The sunshine of Paphian skies seems ever dawning upon 
the horizon of a holier hope; the warmth and fruition of 
a new summer seems ever alighting upon the petals of 
unfading flowers; and in the dark brows of Dodonian 
oaks we see the type of ceaseless renewal and unspared 
exuberance. The soul grows and grows, and feels in its 
inmost recesses the awakening light and divinity of its 
highest spiritual truths. 
Life is a constant flux of moods or conditions, evan¬ 
escent and trails mutable, yet, together, forming a great 
circle in which the true character is encentred. Be the 
mood what it may, it is but a reflex of the combined 
conditions of the true character which lies beneath, and 
the outward and visible influences which surround us. 
Every man wishes for good, wishes to attain to the 
practice of virtue, and to gather to himself the noblest 
thoughts; but while we glide hither and thither under 
masks and pretensions, we mutually deceive ourselves 
and others, and the world comes at last to wear the 
