A LIFE BOUND UP IN A LIFE. 53 him." Philip's pity is piteously implored,-for he, at least, should know, that to men of judgment and foresight, the destruction of the scheme on which they have long dwelt, and for which they have long toiled, is more inexpressibly bitter than the transient grief of ordinary men, whose pursuits are but the gratification of some temporary passion. The house built upon the sands, the loftier it is, and the more it has cost in the building, all the more emphatically great is the fall of that house, when the rains come down upon it and the floods rise against and, in Bible phrase, clap their hands against it, and fall it must. "Aussitôt l'édifice s'écroule, emportant tout le fruit de vos sueurs, tant de dévouement, tant de sacrifices, et votre cœur ni votre vie ne savent plus où se prendre." The contrast drawn by Lewis between his own chagrin, as pre-` sumably unique, and the transient grief of ordinary men, is a commonplace in the characteristics of our common nature. Cicero's answer, alike to Sulpicius and to all his friends, when they sought to rouse him from despondency almost to despair at the loss of Tullia, and reminded him of his own precepts for the afflicted, was, that his case differed from all the examples which he had been collecting for his own imitation, of men who had borne the loss of children with firmness; since they lived in times when their dignity in the State was able, in great measure, to compensate their misfortune. But he had lost the only comfort that was left to him. In the ruin of the Republic, he had still, in Tullia, somewhat always to recur to, in whose sweet conversation he could drop all his cares and troubles; but with her was gone all that made life yet worth the living. "All but this I could have borne," is the exclamation of Mackenzie's Savillon, when Julia is taken from him, as he believes, for ever; the loss of fortune, the decay of health, the coldness of friends, might have admitted of hope here only was despair to be found, and he had found it. "She was so interwoven with my thoughts of futurity, that life now fades into a blank, and is not worth the keeping." How could Philip, in The Mill on the Floss, be resigned to the loss of the one thing which had ever come to him on earth with the promise of such deep joy as would give a new and blessed meaning to the foregoing pain-the promise of another self that would lift his aching affection into the "divine rapture of an ever-springing, ever-satisfied want?" Catherine Earnshaw, in her wild way, or in Ellis Bell's (and that is Emily Brontè's) wild way, says of Heathcliff, that if all else perished, and he remained, she too in him should continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; she no longer should seem a part of it. To live but for one, to dream of but one, to exist by the remembrance of that one, to listen for his very breath, because his breathing is more to your existence than your own; to devote, as another impassioned mistress of fiction words it, "your whole nature, your aspirations, your hopes, your thoughts, your whole soul"-to surrender all, to cast all at the shrine of one object, and to know that suddenly it is withdrawn from you, and you may never see it more,—whoso has been spared such an anguish, is assured that his or her burden in life has not been great. "Quand j'étais absolument seul," writes a devoted student of the heart,—of his own at least, and in particular,-"mon cœur était vide; mais il n'en fallait qu'un pour le remplir. Le sort m'avait ôté. celui pour lequel la nature m'avait fait. Dès lors j'étais seul; car il n'y eut jamais pour moi d'intermédiaire entre tout et rien." He was evidently all she had to love in the world, is Mr. Carlyle's comment on Friedrich Wilhelm's mother, when parting with her one son—that "rugged creature" being inexpressibly precious to her. For days after his departure she kept solitary, and soon afterwards she died; and among the papers she had been scribbling (for meanwhile she indulged in her own sad reflections without stint), there was found one slip with a heart sketched on it, and round the heart "PARTI” (gone): 66 My heart is gone," and with it her life. There either she must live, or have no life. So of Maynard Gilfil and his lost Caterina we read, in one of George Eliot's scenes of clerical life, that in her he had not lost the object of a few months' passion, but the being who was bound up with his power of loving, as A LIFE BOUND UP IN A LIFE. 55 the brook we played by or the flowers we gathered in childhood are bound up with our sense of beauty. For years, the thought of her had to him been present in everything, like the air and the light; and now she was gone, it seemed as if all pleasure had lost its vehicle. Of Venetia's father we are told, when his heart melted to his daughter, after long estrangement and separation, that his philosophical theories all vanished, and he felt how dependent we are in this world on our natural ties: "nor did he care to live without her love and presence." For the affection of both wife and daughter his heart now yearned to that degree, that he could not contemplate existence without their active sympathy. Virginius, in the play, calls the tie of fatherhood a thing so twined and knotted round his heart, that, break it, and his heart breaks with it. Virginia has long before delivered herself of a parallel passage, when they try to make out Virginius not to be her father : "Virginius, my dear father, not my father! It cannot be; my life must come from him; For, make him not my father, it will go From me. I could not live an hour an he were not : In another play by the same dramatist we have the Prince of Mantua exulting in his return to his native city, and to the wife within its walls (The Wife is the name of that play) : "Dear Mantua, that twice has given me life; That breath were given in vain ! For never speed me Heaven, if life seems life, Until I stand in her sweet sight again.' : Young's Alonzo, in the Revenge, declares of his lost Leonora that to him she was all—his fame, friendship, love of arms, all stooped to her :— "Deep in the secret foldings of my heart She lived with life, and far the dearer she." Milton's Adam protests in his hour of darkness, that should God create another Eve, yet loss of this one would never from his heart. If death consort with her, death is to him as life. To lose her, were to lose himself. Had she not already, and all too lately, said of Adam,— "So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life"? That was at the dread crisis of the Fall. When the time came for that part of the penalty to be enforced which involved exile from Eden, her clinging to her husband was the same, if expressed in accents sadder and more subdued :— But now lead on ; In me is no delay; with thee to go Is to stay here; without thee here to stay Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me Art all things under Heaven, all places thou." A FLOOD OF TEARS. GENESIS xlv. 2, 14, 15. LAMENTATIONS i. 16; ii. 18; iii. 48, 49. WHEN as her Benjamin, his mother's son, he ́HEN Joseph, as Egypt's Viceroy, lifted up his eyes, "made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there." And when, soon afterwards, he made himself known unto his brethren, after those long years of cruel separation, he wept aloud, so that, although Joseph had taken the precaution of shutting out every stranger while he made himself known to his brethren, yet the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard the loud weeping of their lord. And when Joseph had ended his discovery of himself to those of his own blood, he fell upon his very own brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck. "Moreover, he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them." The tears of men were not thought unmanly in those old A FLOOD OF TEARS. 66 57 times. A flood of tears, if only there was meet occasion for it, was accounted nothing to be ashamed of, but the reverse. Το the Psalmist, his tears were his meat, day and night. Rivers of waters ran down his eyes because men kept not God's law. And were not his tears in the bottle of his Maker? The prophet Jeremiah's eyes wept sore, and ran down with tears, because the Lord's flock was carried away captive. Let his eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter of his people was broken with a great breach, and with a very grievous blow. "For these things I weep: mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water." "Let tears run down like a river day and night; give thyself no rest : let not the apple of thine eye cease.' Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission." Esau, the rough hunter and robust man of the field, cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, when he found himself defrauded of his father's blessing; and lifting up his voice, he wept, as only strong men can weep, who are simple and natural as well as strong. When he and his supplanting brother met again, long years after, impetuous Esau ran to meet hesitating Jacob, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him, and they wept, both of them, and were not ashamed. When Joseph was reported dead, his father Jacob rent his clothes, and mourned for him many days, and would not be comforted by all his sons and all his daughters when they rose up to comfort him, but protested that mourn he Iwould to the last. Thus his father wept for Joseph. How Joseph wept in after days we have seen. And the time would fail to tell, except by reference in passing, of King David's tears for Absalom; of Elisha's prophetic tears in presence of Hazael, who was moved to inquire, "Why weepeth my lord?" -of Hezekiah weeping sore, in prospect of death; of Peter weeping bitterly, in all the bitterness of remorse; of the elders of Ephesus all weeping sore, as they fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him, and bade him, so reluctantly, so remonstrantly, a last farewell. And at the grave of His friend, "Jesus wept," |