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When, dying in the darkness of God's light,
The soul can pierce these blinding webs of nature,
And float up to the nothing, which is all things-
The ground of being, where self-forgetful silence
Is emptiness,-emptiness fulness,-fulness God,--
Till we touch Him, and, like a snow-flake, melt
Upon His light-sphere's keen circumference !
Eliz. Hast thou felt this?

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Oh, happy Guta!

Mine eyes are dim-and what if I mistook
For God's own self, the phantoms of my brain?
And who am I, that my own will's intent

Should put me face to face with the living God?
I, thus thrust down from the still lakes of thought
Upon a boiling crater-field of labour.

No! He must come to me, not I to Him;
If I see God, beloved, I must see Him

In mine own self:

Guta. Eliz.

Thyself?

Why start, my sister?

God is revealed in the crucified :

The crucified must be revealed in me :-
I must put on His righteousness; show forth
His sorrow's glory; hunger, weep with Him;
Taste His keen stripes, and let this aching flesh
Sink through His fiery baptism into death.
That I may rise with Him, and in His likeness
May ceaseless heal the sick, and soothe the sad,
And give away like Him this flesh and blood
To feed His lambs-ay-we must die with Him
To sense--and love-

Guta.

Of marriage vows?
Eliz.

To love? What, then, becomes

I know it so speak not of them.
Oh! that's the flaw, the chasm in all my longings,
Which I have spanned with cobweb arguments,
Yet yawns before me still, where'er I turn,
To bar me from perfection; had I given
My virgin all to Christ! I was not worthy!
I could not stand alone!

Guta.

Here comes your husband.
Eliz. He comes! my sun! and every thrilling vein
Proclaims my weakness.

[LEWIS enters.

Here is Walter's shrewd physiognomical reading of Conrad:

Lewis. [aside.] Well, Walter mine, how like you the good legate ? Wal. Walter has seen nought of him but his eye;

And that don't please him.

Lewis.

How so, sir! that face

Is pure and meek-a calm and thoughtful eye.

Wal. A shallow, stony, stedfast eye; that looks at neither man nor beast in the face, but at something invisible a yard before him, through you and past you, at a fascination, a ghost of fixed purposes that haunts him, from which neither reason nor pity will turn him. I have seen such an eye in men possessed-with devils, or with self: sleek passionless men, who are too refined to be manly, and measure their grace by their effeminacy; crooked vermin, who swarm up in pious times, being drowned out of their earthy haunts by the springtide of religion; and so making a gain of godliness, swim upon the first of the flood, till it cast them ashore on the firm beach of wealth and station. I always mistrust those wall-eyed saints.

After the death of the Landgrave on his way to the Crusade, and the dispossession of Elizabeth by Henry, Elizabeth determines on abandoning her children, and retiring to Marpurg, there to wear out her life in meditation and pious deeds, weaned of all earthly affections. Her uncle, the jolly fighting Bishop of Bamberg, anxious she should marry, in no way relishes this determination of his saintly niece, nor the counsels of Conrad which have led to it. We give the scene between the two priests, and leave our readers to apply the contrasted characters to types in the church of our own day.

Eliz. Uncle, I soar now at a higher pitchTo be henceforth the bride of Christ alone.

Bishop. Ahem!-a pious notion-in moderation. We must be moderate, my child, moderate; I hate overdoing anythingespecially religion.

Con. Madam, between your uncle and myself

This question in your absence were best mooted. [Exit ELIZABETH.
Bishop. How, priest? do you order her about like a servant maid?
Con. The saints forbid !-Now-ere I lose a moment-[Kneeling.
[Aside.] All things to all men be-and so save some-
[Aloud.] Forgive, your grace, forgive me,

If mine unmannered speech in aught have clashed
With your more tempered and melodious judgment:
Your courage will forgive an honest warmth.

God knows, I serve no private interests.

Bishop. Your orders, hey? to wit?

Con.

My lord, my lord,

There may be higher aims: but what I said,

I said but for our Church, and our cloth's honour.

Ladies' religion, like their love, we know,

Requires a gloss of verbal exaltation,

Lest the sweet souls should understand themselves;

And clergymen must talk up to the mark.

Bishop. We all know, Gospel preached in the mother-tongue

Sounds too like common sense.

Con.

Or too unlike it:

You know the world, your grace, you know the sex-
Bishop. Ahem! As a spectator.

Con.

Philosophicè-
Just so-You know their rage for shaven crowns-
How they'll deny their God-but not their priest-
Flirts-scandal-mongers-in default of both come,
Platonic love-worship of art and genius-

Idols which make them dream of heaven, as girls
Dream of their sweethearts, when they sleep on bride-cake.
It saves from worse-we are not all Abelards.

Bishop. [Aside.] Some of us have his tongue, if not his face.
Con. There lies her fancy; do but balk her of it—

She'll bolt to cloisters, like a rabbit scared.

Head her from that-she'll wed some pink-faced boy-
The more low-bred and penniless, the likelier.
Send her to Marpurg, and her brain will cool.
Tug at the kite-'twill only soar the higher:
Give it but line, my lord, 'twill drop like slate.
Use but that eagle's glance, whose daring foresight
In chapter, camp, and council, wins the wonder
Of timid trucklers-Scan results and outcomes-
The scale is heavy in your grace's favour.

Bishop. Bah! priest! What can this Marpurg-madness do for me?

Con. Leave you the tutelage of all her children.

Bishop. Thank you to play the drynurse to three starving brats. Con. The minors' guardian guards the minors' lands.

Bishop. Unless they are pitched away in building hospitals.

Con. Instead of fattening in your wisdom's keeping.

Bishop. Well, well-but what gross scandal to the family!

Con. The family, my lord, would gain a saint.

Bishop. Ah! monk, that canonization costs a frightful sum.
Con. Those fees, just now, would gladly be remitted.

Bishop. These are the last days, faith, when Rome's too rich to take!

Con. The Saints forbid, my lord, the fisher's see Were so o'ercursed by Mammon! But you grieve, I know, to see foul weeds of heresy

Of late o'errun your diocese.

Bishop.

I've hanged some dozens.

Con.

Ay, curse them!

Worthy of yourself!

But yet the faith needs here some mighty triumph

Some bright example, whose resplendent blaze

May tempt that fluttering tribe within the pale

Of Holy Church again

Bishop.

To singe their wings?

Con. They'll not come near enough. Again-there are Who dare arraign your prowess, and assert

A churchman's energies were better spent
In pulpits, than the tented field. Now mark—
Mark what a door is opened. Give but scope
To this her huge capacity for sainthood-
Set her, a burning and a shining light

To all your people.-Such a sacrifice,

Such loan to God of your own flesh and blood,
Will silence envious tongues, and prove you wise

For the next world as for this; will clear your name
From calumnies which argue worldliness;

Buy of itself the joys of paradise

And-clench your lordship's interest with the pontiff.
Bishop. Well, well, we 'll think on't.

Con.
Sir, I doubt you not.
[Re-enter ELIZABETH.] Uncle, I am determined.
Bishop.

You shall to Marpurg with this holy man.

So am I.

Eliz. Ah, there you speak again like mine own uncle. I'll go-to rest [Aside] and die. I only wait

To see the bones of my beloved laid

In some fit resting-place. A messenger

Proclaims them near. Oh God!

Bishop.

We'll go, my child,

And meeting them with all due honour, show
In our own worship, honourable minds.

[Exit ELIZABETH.

Bishop. A messenger! How far off are they, then?
Serv. Some two days' journey, sir.

Bishop. Two days' journey, and nought prepared? Here, chaplain-Brother Hippodamas! Chaplain, I say! [HIPPODAMAS enters.] Call the apparitor-ride off with him, right and left.-Don't wait, even to take your hawk-Tell my knights to be with me, with all their men-at-arms, at noon on the second day. Let all be of the best, say-the brightest of arms and the newest of garments. Mass! we must show our smartest before these crusaders-they'll be full of new fashions, I warrant 'em-the monkeys that have seen the world. And here, boy-[To a Page.] Set me a stoup of wine in the oriel-room, and another for this good monk.

Con. Pardon me, blessedness-but holy rule

Bishop. Oh! I forgot. A pail of water and a peck of beans for the holy man. Order up my equerry, and bid my armourervestryman, I mean-look out my newest robes-Plague on this gout! [Exeunt, following the Bishop.

We know of no parallel to the later scenes of the Saint's Tragedy, for their minute anatomizing of a morbid asceticism and perverted spirit of self-sacrifice, except the St. Simeon Stylites of the Poet Laureate. There is, however, the important distinction, that the male saint contents himself with mortifying the flesh on his pillar-perch, whereas Elizabeth combines works of mercy with her coarse garb, scanty food, foul lodging,

scourgings and vigils. The picture is less odious, but almost as repulsive. The apology, we presume, for the elaboration with which Mr. Kingsley has wrought out what would have been painful enough even in allusion or description, is his desire of exhibiting the foul and fatal consequences in which a courageous following up of Elizabeth's mistaken principle must land the purest and most ecstatic votary. From nothing we have ourselves come in contact with, can we say that such a warning was needed at this time. But Mr. Kingsley's clerical experience may have led him to the conviction that it was not superfluous. Pseudo-Anglicanism may have adopted Elizabeth's error among others not less fatal to the health of soul and body, and the error may have taken root and spread under that Romanist teaching which still avails itself of the opportunities and endowments of the Church of England.

Looked at as a work of art, the "Saint's Tragedy" suffers from the nature of its subject-a morbid scruple, which it is hardly possible, with all Mr. Kingsley's courage and purity of intention, to touch, without offending the delicacy-prudery might be the fitter word-of the times we live in. Men can hardly realize Elizabeth's self-torturing doubts. Most women will shrink from the attempt to follow them.

Much, however, must be conceded to the lesson of the work -beyond doubt a noble and necessary one-that in the family relations is the root of all genuine and dutiful life, and the spring of sanctified and heaven-intended happiness. And whatever pruriency or prudery may be able to lay hold of in the scruples of Elizabeth, whatever modern squeamishness may find to shock it in the sickening details of her penance, there runs through other parts of the play such a hearty, genial and manly life, and so rich a vein of lyric imagination, that the nature must be perverted indeed which does not find itself more strengthened and sweetened, than startled or shocked, by the "Saint's Tragedy."

But if in this work Mr. Kingsley be amenable to the charge of having wasted his power upon an error of questionable prevalence, no such accusation can be brought against him in the case of " Yeast," or "Alton Locke," the two novels which succeed the "Saint's Tragedy" in date of publication. In both he grapples with evils, individual and social, which are visibly working doubt, despair, misery, and desolation within the circle of every man's experience. There may be question whether the author has reached the real source of these evils, or indicated their true remedy. There can be no doubt of their reality, and of the urgent need of some remedy to be applied to them.

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