The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-10 00:00:00

impertinent world, to leave our bores mouldering
unmolested in some Aftican desert or American
cave; or we should have carefully arranged our
whole life with a view to posthumous publiehtion.
We should never have made a it mark without
considering how it would look in Smithiana."
Further on it is truly and powerfully urged how
end in what manner the record of the lives of
earth's immortal ones should be treated ; how those
on whom falls the trust of biographer should act so
as to make manifest all that should be known, and
be silent on what need not he spoken of.
" Yet understand us ; we ghosts do not wish to
lay an embargo on all biographers, thereby
annihiliating the natural wish of the human heart
to be remembered after death, and causing the
worth and beauty of good men's histories to he
indeed " interred with their bones.' Not so—every-
thing great and noble, virtuous, and heroic in any
author's life—in the life of any man or woman—by
ail means after a decent time has elapsed let it Le
faithfully related for the comfort, instruction, and
example of later generations. The world has a
right to hear and exact such chronicles of its gene-
rations gone by. But let us be chronicled not as
authors, because we have written a book or so
worth reading, but because we have lived a life
worth remembering ; the story of which will have
a beneficial influence on lives yet to come. If any
incense poured upon, or,.sweet odours arising from
our mortal dust, can reach and delight us in our
immortality it must be thus to know that neither
our doings nor our sufferings have been in vain,
and for all concerning us that was purely personal
in noways differing from the rest of our species,
which can neither " point a moral " nor " adorn a
tale," but only minister to an idle and purient
curiosity, in charity's name, let it be buried with
us. The last essay is on the subject of " Lost,"
and it is an appropriate conclusion to a work of
this sort. It states that "Itis a grave reflection
what a number of people there must be in the world
who are not figuratively or poetically but literally
' lost,' who by some means or other, accident, inten-
tion, carelessness, misfortune, or crime, have step-
ped out of the home circle, or the wider round of
friendship and acquaintanceship, and never reap-
peared more; whose place has gradually been filled
up, whose very memory has almost been forgotten,
and against whose name in the family Bible
stands neither the brief momentous annotation
" married," nor the still briefer and often
much safer and happier inscription, '
Died'—
nothing save the ominous pathetic blank, which
only the unveiled secrets of the last day will ever
fill up." The fondest and best of mothers may live
to miss from her Christmas table some one child
whom she knows, and knows that all her other
children know, is more welcome in absence than in
presence, whom to have laid sinless in a baby's
coffin and buried years ago would have been es
nothing—nothing. Yet all these things must be,
and we must bear them, that in the mysterious
working of evil with good we may come out purified
as with fire. The comfort is that in its total
account of gains and losses, every honest and tender
soul will find out sooner or later that the irreme-
diable catalogue of the latter is, we repeat, far
lighter than it first seems. For, who are the
lost ? Not the dead, who " rest from their
labours," and with whom to die is often to
be for ever beloved. Not the far away,
keeping and kept in fond -remembrance, are
often nearer than those who sit at hearth and
board beside us, not even the temporarily
estranged, for faith and patience will often bring
them back again and teach us—
" How like a new gift is old love restored ;
How seems it richer though the very same."