but really having its antecedent in the remotest antiquity, a company of men participate in some simple act,- of sacrifice, it may be, or of amusement. Now that act will be reiterated.

"Quod semel dictum est stabilisque rerum Terminus servet."

The subtile law of repetition, as regards the human will, is as sure in Determination as it is in Consciousness. Habit is as inevitable as Memory; and as nothing can be forgotten, but, when once known, is known forever,—so nothing is done but will be done again. Lethe and Annihilation are only myths upon the earth, which men, though suspicious of their eternal falsehood, name to themselves in moments of despair and fearful apprehension. The poppy has only a fabled virtue ; but, like Persephone, we have all tasted of the pomegranate, and must ever to Hades and back again; for while death and oblivion only seem to be, remembrances and resurrections there must be, and without end. Therefore this before-mentioned act of sacrifice or amusement will be reiterated at given intervals; about it, as a centre, will be gathered all the associations of intense interest in human life; and the names connected with its origin once human names upon the earth will pass upon the stars, so that the nomina shall have changed to numina, and be taken upon the lips with religious awe. So it was with these old festivals, so with all the representations of human life in stone or upon the canvas, in the fairy-tale, the romance, and the poem; at every successive repetition, at every fresh resurrection, is evolved by human faith and sympathy a deeper significance, until they become the centres of national thought and feeling, and men believe in them as in revelations from heaven; and even the oracles themselves, in respect of their inherent meaning, as also of their origin and authority, rise by the same ascending series of repeated birth, — like that at Delphi, which, at first attributed to the Earth, then to Themis, daughter of Earth and Heaven, was at last connected with the

Sun and constituted one of the richest gems in Apollo's diadem of light.

In the end we shall find that the whole world organizes about its centre of Faith. Thus, under three different religious systems, Jerusalem, Delphi, and Mecca were held to be each in its turn the omphalos or navel of the world. It follows inevitably that the main movement of the world must always be joyous and hopeful. By reason of this joy it is that every religious system has its feast; and the sixth day

the day of Iacchus—is the great day of the festival. The inscription which rises above every other is "To the Saviour Gods."

We must look at history as a succession of triumphs from the beginning; and each trophy that is erected outdoes in its magnificence all that were ever erected before it. Nothing has suffered defeat, except as it has run counter to the main movement of conquest. No system of faith, therefore, can by any possibility pass away. Involved it may be in some fuller system; its material bases may be modified; its central source become more central in the human heart, and so stronger in the world and more immediate in its connection with the eternal; but the life itself of the system must live forever and grow forever.

Still it is true that in the widest growth there is the largest liability to weakness. "Thus it is," says Fouqué, "with poor, though richly endowed man. All lies within his power so long as action is at rest within him; nothing is in his power the moment action has displayed itself, even by the lifting-up of a finger on the immeasurable world." In the very extent of the empire of an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Tamerlane, rests the possibility of its rapid dissolution. At the giddiest altitude of triumph it is that the brain grows dizziest and there is revealed the deepest chasm of possible defeat; and the conqueror,

"Having his ear full of his airy fame," is just then most likely to fall like Herod

from his aerial pomp to the very dust. This consciousness, revealing at the highest moment of joy its utmost frailty, led the ancients to suspect the presence of some Ate or Nemesis in all human triumphs. We all remember the king who threw his signet-ring into the sea, that he might in his too happy fortunes avert this suspected presence; we remember, too, the apprehension of the Chorus in the "Seven against Thebes," looking forward from the noontide prosperity of the Theban king to some coming catastrophe.

But it is not without us that this Nemesis waits; she is but another name for the fearful possibility which lurks in every human will, of treachery to itself. And as solemnity rises to its acme in the most sensuous manifestation of the glory of life, so in all that most fascinates and bewilders, at the very crisis of victorious exaltation, at the very height of joyous sensibility, does this mysterious. power of temptation reveal her subtlest treachery; and sometimes in a single moment does she change the golden-filleted Horæ, that are our ministers, into frightful furies, which drive us back again from triumph into flight.

What was it, then, which saved the Eleusinia from this defeat,- which kept the movement of the Dionysiac procession from the ruin inevitably consequent upon all intemperate joy? It was the presence of our Lady, the sorrowing Achtheia, who was the inseparable companion of the joyous conqueror, who subdued the joy of victory, and preserved the strength and holy purity of the great Festival. Demeter was thus necessary to Dionysus, as Dionysus to Demeter; and if in remembrance of him the sepulchral walls were covered with scenes associated with festivity, in remembrance of her there must needs be a skeleton at every feast.

How inseparably connected in human thought is sorrow with all permanent hope is indicated in the penances which men have imposed upon themselves, from the earliest Gymnosophists of India, and

the Stylite of Syria, down to the monastic orders of the Romish Church in later times. This is the meaning of the old Indian fable which made two of the Rishis or penitents to have risen by the discipline of sorrow from some low caste,— it may be, from very Pariahs, first to the rank of Brahmins, and at last to the stars. The first initiation in which we veil our eyes, losing all, is essential to our fresher birth, by which in the second initiation all things are unveiled to us as our inheritance: indeed, it is only through that which veils that anything is ever revealed or possessed.

Through the same gate we pass both to glory and to tragic suffering, each of which heightens and measures the other; and it is only so that we can understand the function of sorrow in the Providence of God, or interpret the sudden calamities which sometimes overwhelm human hopes at their highest aspiration,

- which from the most serene and cloudless sky evoke storms which leave not even a wreck from their vast ruin.

Nor merely is sorrow efficient in those who hope, but in even a higher sense does it attach to the character of Saviour. Apollo is, therefore, fabled to have been an exile from heaven and a servant of Admetus; indeed, Danaüs, in "The Suppliants" of Eschylus, appeals to Apollo for protection on this very plea, addressing him as "the Holy One, and an exiled God from heaven." Thus Hercules was compelled to serve Eurystheus; and his twelve labors were typed in the twelve signs of the zodiac. Esculapius and Prometheus both suffered excruciating tortures and death for the good of men. And Dionysus-himself the centre of all joy was persecuted by the Queen of Heaven and compelled to wander in the world. Thus he wandered through Egypt, finding no abiding-place, and finally, as the story runs, came to the Phrygian Cybele, that he might know in their deepest meaning - even by the initiation of sorrow- the mysteries of the Great Mother. And, very significantly, it is from this same initiation that His wan

derings have their end and his worldwide conquest its beginning; as if only thus could be realized the possibility both of triumph for himself and of hope for his followers. For these wanderers can find rest only in a suffering Saviour, by the vision of whose deeper Passion they lose their sense of grief, as Io on Caucasus in sight of the transfixed Prometheus, and the Madonna at the Cross.

sus.

It is worthy of more attention than we can give it here, yet we cannot pass over in silence the fact, so important in this relation, that Grecian Tragedy, in all its wonderful development under the three great masters, was directly associated, and in its ruder beginnings completely identified, with the worship of DionyAnd this confirms our previous hint, that the same element which made tragedy possible for Greece must also be sought for in the development of its faith. There are those who decry Grecian faith, - at the same time that they laud the Grecian drama to the skies: but to the Greeks themselves, who certainly knew more than we do as regards either, the drama was only an outgrowth of their faith, and derived thence its highest significance. Thus the mystic symbolism of the dramatic Choruses, taken out of its religious connections, becomes an insoluble enigma; and naturally enough; for its first use was in religious worship,-though afterwards it became associated with traditionary and historic events. Besides, it was supposed that the tragedians wrote under a divine inspiration; and the subjects and representations which they embodied were for the most part susceptible of a deep spiritual interpretation. Indeed, upon a careful examination, we shall find that very many of the dramas directly suggest the two Eleusinian movements, representing first the flight of suppliants -as of the Heraclidæ, the daughters of Danaus, and of Edipus and Antigonefrom persecution to the shrine of some Saviour Deity, and finally a deliverance effected through sacrifice or divine interposition. Examples of this are so

numerous that we have no space for a minute consideration.

But certainly it is plain that the Eleusinia, as being more central, more purely spiritual, must in the thought of Greece have risen high above the drama. The very dress in which the mysta were initiated was preserved as most sacred or deposited in the temple. Or if we insist upon measuring their appreciation of the Festival by the more palpable standard of numbers, the temple at Eleusis, by the account of Strabo, was capable of holding even in its mystic cell more persons than the theatre. To be sure, the celebration was only once in five years, but it was all the more sacred from this very infrequency. Nothing in all Greece - and that is saying very much could compare with it in its depth of divine mystery. If anything could, it would have been the drama; but no wailings were ever heard from beneath the masks of the stage like the wailings of Achtheia, -no jubilant song of the Chorus ever rose like the pean of Dionysiac triumph.

Thus was the name of Dionysus connected with the palace and the temple, with the sepulchral court of death and the dramatic representations of life, - and everywhere associated with our Lady.

Sometimes, indeed, she seems to overshadow and hide him from our vision. Thus was it when the Eumenides in their final triumph swept the stage, and victory seemed all in the hands of invisible Powers, with no human participant: even as throughout the Homeric epos there runs an undercurrent of unutterable sadness; because, while to the Gods there ever remains a sure seat upon Olympus, unshaken by the winds, untouched by rain or snow, crowned with a cloudless radiance,-yet upon man come vanity, sorrow, and strife; like the leaves of the forest he flourisheth, and then passeth away to the "weak heads of the dead,” (νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα,) conquered by purple Death and strong Fate.

To the eye of sense, and in the circumscribed movements of this world, the desolation seems complete and the defeat final. But the snows of winter are necessary to the blossoms of spring, - the waste of death to the resurrection of life;

and from the vastest of all desolations does our Lady lead her children in the loftiest of all flights, even from all sorrow and solitude, - from the wastes of earth and the desolation of Eons, to ineffable joy in her Saviour Lord.

I.

JACQUELINE GABRIE and Elsie Méril could not occupy one room, and remain, either of them, indifferent to so much as might be manifested of the other's inmost life. They could not emigrate together, peasants from Domrémy,―Jacqueline so strong, Elsie so fair, could not labor in the same harvest-fields, children of old neighbors, without each being concerned in the welfare and affected by the circumstances of the other.

It was near ten o'clock, one evening, when Elsie Méril ran up the common stairway, and entered the room in the fourth story where she and Jacqueline lodged.

Victor Le Roy, student from Picardy, occupied the room next theirs, and was startled from his slumber by the voices of the girls. Elsie was fresh from the theatre, from the first play she had ever witnessed; she came home excited and delighted, ready to repeat and recite, as long as Jacqueline would listen.

And here was Jacqueline. Early in the evening Elsie had sought her friend with a good deal of anxiety. A fellow-lodger and field-laborer had invited her to see the play, and Jacqueline was far down the street, nursing old Antonine Duprè. To seek her, thus occupied, on such an errand, Elsie had the good taste, and the selfishness, to refrain from doing.

Therefore, after a little deliberation, she had gone to the theatre, and there

forgot her hard day-labor in the wonders of the stage,-forgot Jacqueline, and Antonine, and every care and duty. It was hard for her, when all was ended, to come back to compunction and explanation, yet to this she had come back.

Neither of the girls was thinking of the student, their neighbor; but he was not only wakened by their voices, he amused himself by comparing them and their utterances with his preconceived notions of the girls. They might not have recognized him in the street, though they had often passed him on the stairs; but he certainly could have distinguished the pretty face of Elsie, or the strange face of Jacqueline, wherever he might meet them.

Elsie ran on with her story, not careful to inquire into the mood of Jacqueline,— suspicious of that mood, no doubt,— but at last, made breathless by her haste and agitation, she paused, looked anxiously at Jacqueline, and finally said, —

"You think I ought not to have gone ?"

it gave you pleasure." A pause followed. It was broken at length by Elsie, exclaiming, in a voice changed from its former speaking,—

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'Jacqueline Gabrie, you are homesick! horribly homesick, Jacqueline!"

"You do not ask for Antonine: yet you know I went to spend the day with her," said Jacqueline, very gravely.

"How is Antonine Duprè?" asked Elsie.

"She is dead. I have told you a good

many times that she must die. Now, she is dead."

"Dead?" repeated Elsie.

"You care as much as if a candle had gone out," said Jacqueline.

"She was as much to me as I to her," was the quick answer. "She never liked She did not like my mother before

me. me.

When you told her my name, the day we saw her first, I knew what she thought. So let that go. If I could have done her good, though, I would, Jacqueline."

"She has everything she needs, -a great deal more than we have. She is very happy, Elsie."

"Am not I? Are not you, in spite of your dreadful look? Your look is more terrible than the lady's in the play, just before she killed herself. Is that because Antonine is so well off?"

"I wish that I could be where she is," sighed Jacqueline.

"You? You are tired, Jacqueline. You look ill. You will not be fit for to-morrow. Come to bed. It is late."

As Jacqueline made no reply to this suggestion, Elsie began to reflect upon her words, and to consider wherefore and to whom she had spoken. Not quite satished with herself could she have been, for at length she said in quite another

"In the midst of life, behold,

Death hath girt us round!

Whom for help, then, shall we pray?

Where shall grace be found?

In thee, O Lord, alone!

We rue the evil we have done,
That thy wrath on us hath drawn.

Holy Lord and God!

Strong and holy God!
Merciful and holy Saviour!
Eternal God!

Sink us not beneath

Bitter pains of endless death!
Kyrie, eleison!"

"Then he went away," she continued. "But he did not think it was the last time he should speak to Antonine. In the afternoon I thought I saw a change, and I wanted to go for somebody. But she

said, Stay with me. I want nothing.' So I sat by her bed. At last she said, 'Come, Lord Jesus! come quickly!' and she started up in her bed, as if she saw him coming. And as if he were coming nearer, she smiled. That was the last, without a struggle, or as much as a groan."

"No priest there?" asked Elsie.

"No. When I spoke to her about it, she said her priest was Jesus Christ the Righteous, and there was no other,the High-Priest. She gave me her Bible. See how it has been used! Search the Scriptures,' she said. She told me I was able to learn the truth. I loved your mother,' she said; that is the reason I am so anxious you should know. It is