The Carthusian

Buffon, and Scott, be of any authority with us at all. Some care of these things we must have, for One far higher than all has bid us " behold the fig-tree and all the trees," and "consider the lilies of the field”. A garden is inwoven in the noblest and most sacred feelings of man's heart. This world, in man's innocence, was a garden, and it was there that God walked and communed with his creatures. It was to a garden that in his agony our Lord retired. The very word Paradise is only another name for bliss; and it may be doubted whether it gains this signification, so much from our first parents dwelling there before sin and sorrow were known, as from the natural feelings of all nations and creeds to connect the happiness of a future state inseparably with that of a boundless expanse of trees, and fruits, and flowers. The shade of Achilles is described by Homer as retiring over a mead of asphodels

« κατ ̓ ἀσφοδελὸν λειμώνα.”

and Virgil knew how to contrast the adamantine walls and iron-bound towers of the guilty, with the flowery lawns of the blessed :

amœna vireta

Fortunatorum nemorum ;"

and Addison, in his Vision of Mirza, had no better way of describing the seats of bliss than as "islets floating in a sunny sea, covered with fruits and flowers".

What indeed were the Elysian fields, and the Happy isles, and the gardens of the Hesperides, but so many incorporations of the highest and loftiest flights of man's imaginations and desires,-the realizations of the intensest yearnings of the soul after a higher and more glorious state of existence, and which always made a garden the scene of that better and more abiding happiness?

Of all the secondary occupations and pursuits of this life, the garden is the only one we can hope to follow out in the world which is to come. Simple and pure as any other of our enjoyments may be, the best of them are too artificial and too gross to give us the least hope of our ever meeting them again. Even our books, which we have loved as friends,-which we have pored over through the long summer days till twilight dimmed our eyes, or hugged in our arm-chairs over the huge winter firethat we have viewed with such complacency glittering in their gay coats along our study wall,-they must moulder like their master,-doomed, like him, to be the sport of worms. The precious imprints of Aldus and the gorgeous tooling of Grolier are of the earth, earthy. Our prints, our pictures, and our statues, all our most laboured effigies of ideal beauty, will be as nothing, when the fleeting idea we have endeavoured to embody shall itself be realized, and when we shall cast away all our paltry imitations as "childish things".

But our flowers, dear flowers, our trees, our gardens, shall remain. The new earth will be a second Eden, and Paradise and innocence shall be restored. Then shall the feathery palm-tree and lowly snow-drop flourish in the same clime. The wilderness will bloom with the rose of Sharon; the upas will forget its poison; the nettle will be stingless, and "without thorn the rose;" the mango and the guava will ripen under the same sky that will allow the eglantine to bind their branches. And this is no idle dream or heathen myth. What may be fancy to others, to the Christian will be faith. He alone can certainly look forward, in "the new heavens and the new earth," to that time when "the mountains and hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the

fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree; the wilderness, and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose."

REMEMBRANCE.

REMEMBRANCE! Oh the crowd of thoughts that word doth comprehend,

Thoughts manifold in origin, as limitless in end;

Thoughts now o'ercharged with heaviness, now big with life and light,

Upborne on wings of ripened hopes, or laden with their blight; Now fresh in healthful glow,

Now withering as they grow;

Oh who shall paint REMEMBRANCE in its blended bliss and woe?

REMEMBRANCE! Blessed is it, when the retrospective glance Lends but a brighter beam to days and years as they advance, When present joys win richer zest from former doubts and fears,

And we reap a smiling harvest from a seed-time past of tears; Like lovers' healing kiss,

In semblance such as this

Thou art in sooth, REMEMBRANCE, but another name for bliss.

REMEMBRANCE! Fearful is it, when its summonings but bring,

In startling freshness, thoughts of which no time can blunt the sting;

Fond hopes all shipwrecked; kindness wronged; warm confidence betrayed;

Affection scorned; and friendship-but the shadow of a shade; Alas! in such a dress,

Fit partner of distress,

Alas! what can REMEMBRANCE be, but added wretchedness? REMEMBRANCE! Of Youth's toils and sports recurs the varied round;

The keen palæstral conflict-or of school-or cricket-ground ; The loved preceptor's favouring nod; the game's tumultuous cheer;

The well-conned calendar, which told-the holidays were near; Home's old familiar ways;

Our "first love's" smile of praise ;Oh the REMEMBRANCE of those guileless, happy, schoolboy days!

REMEMBRANCE! Where's the mortal who unshrinking has withstood

Temptation of the Evil one, and held his course of good; Has spurned the crooked by-path, put aside the gilded sin, Unswayed by other voices than the still small voice within? Arrayed in robes of light,

Him doth REMEMBRANCE bright

Visit in cheering thoughts by day, and placid dreams by night. REMEMBRANCE! Ask of him who yields up principle for

place,

And barters simple honour for magnificent disgrace;

Ask her whose treachery dooms a trusting heart to pine to death;

Ask him who love and service true requites-with empty breath;

Can power, rank, wealth, appease

The conscious mind's disease?

Ask what, in still reflection's hour, REMEMBRANCE says to

these.

REMEMBRANCE! What is it to him, the slave of power's pre

text,

The favourite of this hour's caprice, the victim of the next, The hopeless exile-doomed in bitter listlessness to roam Afar from home and friends and love, and all that makes it home;

Oh say, to such as he

What can REMEMBRANCE be

But aggravated sentence of an inward misery?

REMEMBRANCE! Ay, to him who, borne in manhood's healthful pride

O'er Danube's wave, or Tiber's stream, or Ganges' swollen tide,

From palace or from fort, from classic arch or trophied dome, Looks through a lengthened vista to the well-known haunts of home,