realm of dreams. Solitude, where is it? Where man carries himself he carries society. In the rocky cavern, on the wide sea, amid the everlasting snows of the Alpine peaks, or floating in his aërial ship amid the clouds, he cannot escape companionship. It is not good to be alone. Our spirit needs the discipline that other spirits can bring, for otherwise we were as an orb in empty space, striking no note in the grand harmony of worlds. What were we without our memories, that give inhabitants to the many mansions of our spiritual house? Why is it that we so foster a love and reverence for beings we have never seen in the flesh, but with whose souls we feel a profound companionship? Why is it that a censure on them is worse than on ourselves, and praise of their virtue is dearer than any flattery to our own? All this tells how dear to us is the society in which we most truly live, and assures us that we never are alone.

But the will has, at least, a partial sovereignty, even here. We solicit the presence of spirits as we do forms, and we can choose, if we please, to entertain angels or demons not unawares. And here lies the test of character. How do we voluntarily people our solitude? What forms do we invite to dispel our sense of loneliness, and charm the desert with the presence of familiar spirits? These reveal the man. They show us the ruling idea, the

thoughts that form and fashion the character. When thus the chamber of imagery' is thrown open, and we see what the man worships 'in the dark,' we behold him. The phantom shape which has met us in our daily walks is no longer the man, no more than the shadow elongated by the setting sun gives us the just proportions of his form. We have passed beyond the veil. The character of the admiration and worship which the soul fosters, is known. I do not marvel that spiritual men in the first ages of our Religion, dreamed that the Christ that walked our earth was but a form of thin air, and not substantial; for what form did they ever see that could express the greatness of that soul they adored. The body, at best, was but as the rainbow, many forms by which the light revealed its beauty. To see Jesus' we must come not, as the Greeks at the festival, to look on the outward man, but to penetrate to the soul, asking what companionship he enjoyed while he was in the world, but not of it. The revelation made in the mount when Moses and Elias talked with him, was but one glance into the world in which Jesus constantly lived, and where he had fit companions.

one of

And so with the prisoner. What is it to look in upon the little space compassed by the walls of the Tower? What is it to have only the aid of the single ray of light that penetrates to that tomb? How can we

judge of the hardness of the pillow by looking at the rock, or his food by beholding the loaf and the water? The Solitary! oh, no. The triumph of cruelty reached not to the beings of the mind. It could smite the marble, and break into fragments the incarnation of the thought that almost breathed and smiled; it could make the flame shrivel up the canvas that glowed with forms of majesty and grace, but the creative mind of the artist it could not touch. It could thrust the body into the Tower, but the soul was still in the universe of life, growth, and beauty. The prison to the guilty and the innocent-how different! Like the stillness of night, with its solemn stars; the quiet country, with its worshipping trees and murmuring streams, whispering the prayer of purity; the hush of the forest, with the low sound of the wandering wind; the silence of the sea-shore, with the unbreathing ocean in full view.

The Secret History of the Prison would be the most thrilling and instructive of all human annals, exposing the best resources of the mind, and pouring a flood of light on the philosophy of happiness. What to the tried and disciplined soul are the bars and stone of the dungeon? Distracting objects are excluded, that the soul may live more in God. The song rises, though the wing cannot be spread.

Madame Guyon, in the Bastile, uttered the experience of those who have found God in the prison:

My cage confines me round;

Abroad I cannot fly;

But though my wing is closely bound,

My heart's at liberty.

My prison walls cannot control

The flight, the freedom of the soul.'

And the Prisoner of Gisors,-Pontani, pleading with the mother of God to pity him,—what a human interest has he given to the Tower! The State bound his wing and caged him. The bird of Jove reminded too many of the Thunderer, and inspired them with energy and power. Pontani must suffer for liberty. The altar of Moloch must have its victim, and the sacrifice without blemish burned all the better. He must know the martyrdom of the children of Progress and Liberty, who must bide their time and lot, while Herod's small brains are turned with the dancer's heel, and the head of the Forerunner, bleeding on the salver, re

wards the dizzying gyrations of Herodias' daughter. The historian of freedom must make many pilgrimages to prisons, to find the valiant, who lived for all ages in despising the wrongs of their own. Youthful Milton, at Rome, gazing on the almost blind Galileo, passing his old age in prison, is a picture that may well illuminate the history of Progress. Out beyond the close, damp air of the dungeon, the soaring mind of the Astronomer went, to gaze on the overarching firmament, and he beheld the procession of worlds, as they moved around the kingly sun; while to the free the sun itself whirled round the stationary earth. As Milton gazes on the philosopher, what visions filled that prison! How the walls did disappear, and on the right hand and the left the mind beheld the strife of Bigotry with Truth, and the noble creatures made sacrifices in the worship of Superstition and Tyranny. Milton left that prison, but not Galileo; for the presence of the noble Florentine was felt in the hours of holiest inspiration, when the Poet plead the cause of Liberty. So may we take with us the aspiring Pontani from the tower of Gisors, and let his works speak to us of the omnipotence of genius.

With the perfection of cruelty, the Tower must be built in circular form, so that the eye of the victim of state despotism could find no point of rest,