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more hope, and not more sorrow, amongst those for whom it has done nothing, than amongst those whose lives depend on it. Steam and progress may have given much to the world, but there is nothing that they have given like what they have taken away. For this Western civilisation there may be a better future in store. Some new revelation may some day give it a meaning, like that which it once had during the ages of faith, which it ridicules ; but at present it seems to have destroyed even the materials out of which such a meaning might be made. Its highest science and wisdom result in two things only—the multiplication of superficial wants, and the disintegration of all our deepest hopes—and when we return to it, and greet it again after absence, it is hard to avoid asking in cold and sober seriousness, What does it profit a civilisation if it gains the whole world, and loses its own soul? Could any voice of redemption from the body of this death once more say to us, ' Lo, I come quickly,' who of us is there—not a beast or a fool—who would devoutly answer, ' Even so, come ! ' Spottistvoode $ Co. Printers, New-street Square, London. 298 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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