Bertha and Lily.

BERTHA AND LILY;

OR,

THE PARSONAGE OF BEECH GLEN.

CHAPTER I.

I said the years with change advance:
If I make dark my countenance,

I shut my life from happier chance.

TENNYSON.

I HAVE not renounced the world, but the world rejects me ; I do not grow bitter in heart, I do not sink into apathy, I do not repine at this; above all, I do not vex the Eternal Father with my poor egotistic prayers, made up of wounded vanity, selfish discontent, and puerile unbelief. On the contrary, I stand, as it were, poised amid universal relations, and the world goes on around me, and the starry heavens above me, and afar off, down from the very fountain of Divine love, pure floods of ineffable beauty and unadulterate truth are poured upon my upturned head-and thus I feel no isolation, no discontent, no grief. The great soul must be alone; and yet it feels a sweet, benign, lovely affinity with its kind, beyond the expression of all words,

and, as the finer harmonies are evolved in the world, mankind grow into tender relations therewith, and learn to call it -Friend, Sister, Brother.

Last night the shouts of a gay group of children came to my ear at night-fall-then I heard the easy roll of the railway train, as it slid along without effort, leaving a beautiful cloud sailing up the mountain side, and mingling with the glowing twilight; I heard the lowing of cattle amid the hills, and the lapsing flow of the river, and human voices in friendly communion; surely, I said, these are all akin, one to another; man so blends himself into the soul of nature, that there is no discord, no solitude-while I, I am alone; then an eagle which had been poised upon a peak above, stooped himself nearly to my feet-slowly he circled around, slowly he raised himself into the blue ether, rising and rising, now a broad, powerful wing displacing the red twilight; now fainter and fainter in the blue above, till my eyes watched in vain for his image, and only a faint thread dropped nearer and nearer along the sky, till it fell at my feet. The royal bird had loosed a pinion when nearest heaven, and the spirit of my invisible friend said take it and write therewith, it may case thine own heart, it may comfort another's, and so I took up the eagle quill and wrote the following lines, and then this Journal:

THE SOUL-SOLITUDE.

Alone, alone, in utmost need,

With true-soul banning evil deed,

And heart that breaks not, though it bleed.

All, all alone to solve the doubt-
To work our life-long problem out,
Casting our feeble hands about,

For human help, for human cheer,
Or only for a human tear,
Forgetting God is always near.

The loveliest face bath never brought
Its fairest look-the deepest thought
Is never into language wrought-

And beauty to the highest Art,
Slips from the Painter's hand apart,
And leaves him, aching at the heart:

And music borne by echo back,
Pines on a solitary track

Till faint hearts cry, alas! alack!

Love seeks in vain an answering tone
To that deep meaning of his own,
Known unto God himself alone.

The wine-press must alone be trod,
The burning ploughshare pressed unshod-

There is no rock of help but God.