So fully had such thoughts absorbed Paul's mind, that when, upon entering the room, he met Esther and her father, he started, as if the sight of flesh and blood were strange to him. At dinner he seemed but half conscious of what was before him; his look and manner were abstracted ; and when he replied to any remark, his answers were abrupt and from the purpose. " You are a good deal of a dreamer, I know," said Mr. Waring at last ; " but I think I never saw you less awake to what's homely and sub- stantial in this world we live in." " They sleep, and their eyes are sealed, who do not look beyond it," said Paul, just so as to be heard. The old gentleman looked at Esther ; but her eyes were fixed on Paul, who did not observe it, for his were cast downward. Her heart beat with uneasy sensations, and anxious, uncertain thoughts troubled her. She tried to command herself; and as soon as she could, she spoke to him in an affectionate, cheerful voice. He look- ed suddenly up at her with a fond and rapturous gaze, as if an angel had spoken to him out of a cloud.—" Ah," said she, playfully, " I've called you back to earth again, Paul." " Scarce to earth," said he, his suffused eye resting on her beautiful face. — He had quite forgotten that any one was by, till the old gentle- man spoke. The blood went quick to his cheek. " What, so long married, and a lover yet ?" cried Mr. Waring. " I thought love would have become a dearer sort of friendship ere this." " I doubt," said Paul, half smiling, and glad to turn the affair into a speculation, " I doubt whether, in certain minds, love ever so changes its nature. It is a part of their constitution, and endures as long as they do, at least, I think so ; though I cannot tell what old age and gray hairs may do towards a change. It is the only thing that has made me recoil from the thought of being an old man." " And what would you make of a pair of mar- ried lovers of threescore ?" „I like not thinking of it," said Paul, with a fitful expression of pain. " I would rather part soul and body, than lose long cherished and dear thoughts. Nor do I believe they will be lost. Those who are good enough for a happy state hereafter, must rest their chief hopes and pleas- ures, even in their attachments here, on that which is fitted to live forever. The corruption of humanity that's now about them will drop off, but essentially, I trust, our feelings and joys will remain the same. What makes my soul's chief earthly happiness would be my misery, did I not believe it eternal, like the soul itself. To die, will be but the full opening of this same mind with all its good affections, which scarcely bud here, to the light and sweet air of heaven. Is what we tread on here, truth, — and our imag- inations all a lie ? I would believe that these high and gladdening conceptions were not all a cheat, but that they will one day open in glory on our cleared and delighted vision. What is beautiful and true here, though it perish for a season, will put forth again in more perfect beauty in the morning light of that sun which will never go down. Pardon my warmth, Sir," - said he, suddenly checking himself. "Then," said Mr. Waring, "you think the after existence of the happy but the continuance of their earthly affections purified and exalted, along, you mean, no doubt, with a greater love , and knowledge of God. " Much so, Sir." " Has not your religion too much to do with the senses ?" " It is idle presumption to reason about what we know so very little of. I was simply saying what were my hopes and wishes, and what gave me here, that which seemed to me like a fore- taste of joys hereafter, and had at times per- suaded me, that what I felt was not a vain imagination. I cannot so separate the natures of the mind and senses as some would do. There is not an earthly beauty I look upon that has not something in it spiritual to me. And when my mind is fair and open, and soul right, there is not a flower I see that does not move my heart to feel towards it as a child of God. All that is, to my mind is a type of what shall be ; and my own being and soul seem to me as if linked with it to eternity. I know that to many this is mere folly, and that even to those of highest reach it is but vague ; for what can we have while here but intimations and dim sem- blances of eternity. Yet for that, a man might well deny he has a heart ; for he will find it growing the more a mystery, the more he studies it. We think of angels as having shapes and voices, and if the unbelieving would say that the writ is false, how came the mind of man from the beginning to conceive of such things as true ? Is that connected with our highest faith, and what seems inborn in the mind, a lie ?" Paul became silent ; he was filled with hap- pier and calmer emotions than he had for a long time known. Esther observed his tranquillity, and for a while she was blest with the belief that it would be lasting. She knew that such thoughts were not strangers to him ; but she had seen them before only when they came and went swiftly, lifting him suddenly and wildly out of horror and despair, to a rapturous height, then leaving him to sink deeper than ever. When his dark thoughts and passions seized him, they seemed to her more like outward, terrific powers which drove him whither they would, than like things springing from his own mind and heart. There was a mystery about them that made her fear when they took him. and yet her heart bled with pity for him. There are souls which have hours of bright and holy aspirations, when they feel as if nothing of earth or sin could touch them more ; but in the midst of their clear and joyous calm they find some dark and frightful passion, like an ugly devil, beginning to stir within them. The mind tries to fly from it, but, as if it saw its hour, it seizes on its prey with a fanged hold, — rend- ing all beneath it. Perhaps there are no minds of the highest intellectual order that have not known such moments, when they would have fled from the thoughts and sensations which they felt like visitants from hell. Paul's mind was of this structure ; and so long and violently had he suffered under such influ- ences, that his natural superstition, heighten- ed by them, had almost persuaded him his passions were good or evil spirits which had power to bless or curse him. The story and appearance of poor Abel haunted him. He called it insanity ; but he could not shake off the feeling that the miserable wretch was the victim of a Demon. He began to tremble for himself; and when he felt his violent passions in motion, the thought that they were powers it was in vain to struggle against, almost drove him mad. The night for the ball at last came, and Esther's spirits rose as the hour drew nigh. She had left home but little for a long time past, and though her love for Paul was almost devo- tion, and there was a peculiar sentiment and delicacy in his little attentions to her and the fondness he showed her, yet an undefined awe, a dread of the happening of something fatal, op- pressed her daily more and more ; and any change seemed to be the lifting of a weight from the heart, to let it bound and beat freely again. - Her mind, and all her senses were peculiarly sensitive, and exquisitely alive to enjoyment. Her whole soul seemed to be in whatever she said and did. When Paul was happy, he looked on all this with a delight that cannot be told ; but when a gloom hung on his mind, and he saw her elo- quent, impassioned face and earnest gestures, he remembered how deceitful and prone to sin are the best hearts, how soon the warmed passions may turn from good to evil, and he hardly dared look on what he indistinctly dreaded.
