cultivate everything for selfish enjoyment; to ignore the rights, the feelings, the sympathies of others; to forget that they have any claims upon us. The fair scenes of earth, the religions of the world, the wise and great, the seers of the age—all are to be pressed into the service of intellectual pleasure; but the great lesson of human life-the training, through human sympathy, grief, helpfulness, and manly endeavour, for eternity-this is missed ; nothing is allowed to bring home its deeper teaching; everything is used for pleasure-pleasure more than animal-intellectual, imaginative—but at best selfish, isolated; and this course also leads to despair, disappointment, and misery.

Practically no human being can do what is supposed to be done in the poem. It is again the tendency that is dealt with. Just as no man can live for his body alone until he becomes a mere driveller in delirium tremens, so no man can live for his mind alone. In neither case can he wholly quench his power; "a little grain of conscience makes him sour."

You may go along this road, living in your Palace of Art a life of selfishness and self-isolation, and enjoying your own happiness, without thinking or caring for that of others. This course Tenny

son sketches, its progress and its inevitable fate -a fate written upon the page of history itself, in characters of fire and blood.

In Athens, sensuality and culture at their bestended with the murder of Socrates; at their worst— in Nero's reign, with the Christian massacres and the fire of Rome. In this nineteenth century the same state of feeling is approached by men who despise the people, who narrow their sympathies to a small and confined æsthetic circle, whether in music, art, or science. The habit of mind is the same in all men who live solely for their own pleasure, who shut out as far as they can everything else from life, and deem themselves the princes of intellect, the cultured elect of the earth. For whom indeed need they care but for their own sweet selves? what else is worth caring about?

I warn you against this insidious tendency of our day to love and pamper self, to ignore and despise your fellow creatures en masse-the "people that are cursed, and know nothing." It is a narrow, selfish, mean policy; and upon it is pronounced a true verdict in this allegory of the "Palace of Art."

"I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.

I said, 'O soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well.'

A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish'd brass,
I chose. The rangèd ramparts bright
From level meadow bases, of deep grass,

Suddenly seal'd the light.

Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf
The rock rose clear, or winding stair.
My soul would live alone unto herself,

In her high palace there.

And 'While the world runs round and round,' I said,
'Reign thou apart, a quiet king,—

Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade
Sleeps on his luminous ring.'

In this great mansion, that is built for me,

So royal-rich and wide.""

So then a palace is built, with every conceivable beauty of architecture; and inwardly it is equally adorned:

"Full of great rooms and small the palace stood,

All various, each a perfect whole

From living Nature, fit for every mood

And change of my still soul."

But in all this the "still soul" finds no spiritual'

meaning. For it there is nothing beneath the surface of life. To, the loving heart all this world's beauty and grace is filled with fair and heavenly images, fit to draw the heart nearer to man because nearer to God. Not so in the Palace of Art; here man only looked at the things which were for himself, which promised immediate entertainment, and solace for his transient fancy.

Ah! there was one whom the cloudy summer morn reminded of those whose "goodness was as a morning cloud, and as the early dew that vanished away" (Hos. vi. 4). Another, when he saw the sun unfailing in the regularity of his course, exclaimed, "His compassions fail not; they are new every morning" (Lam. iii. 22). The spring reminded David of the heart of an upright ruler : "He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God; and he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without cloud, as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain" (2 Sam. xxiii. 3, 4).

To the Psalmist, the vision of "a tract of barren sand," which in the "Palace of Art" is a mere imaginative freak, was a symbol of the soul without God:

"in a barren and dry land, where no water is." To the Prophet "an iron coast and angry waves, you seemed to hear them climb and fall," told of the "wicked who were like a troubled sea, that could not rest."

To David, "a full-fed river, winding slow by herds upon an endless plain," gave the sweet promise, "They shall drink of the pleasures as out of a river;" whilst "the reapers at their sultry toil" told of those who had sown in tears, but should “doubtless come again with rejoicing, and bringing their sheaves with them."

But all these fair symbols in the Palace of Art did but reflect back to the man his own selfish spirit. His eyes were fast sealed to the opening revelations of God's many-sided world. And as the outward scenes of earth passed before him, mere idle or amusing visions, so did he pass in review the forms of faith, and the great religions of the world. For a moment the Roman Catholic Faith smiled to him, with its

In that fair symbol there was no deeper teaching, no lesson of history, or feeling of universal interest