“In next order the soot sets to work.  It cannot make itself white at first; but, instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder; and comes out clear at last; and the hardest thing in the world:  and for the blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at once, in the vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot.  We call it then a diamond.

“Last of all, the water purifies, or unites itself; contented enough if it only reach the form of a dewdrop:  but if we insist on its proceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crystallizes into the shape of a star.  And, for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of competition, we have, by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow.”

L. I have asked you to hear that, children, because, from all that we have seen in the work and play of these past days, I would have you gain at least one grave and enduring thought.  The seeming trouble,—­the unquestionable degradation,—­of the elements of the physical earth, must passively wait the appointed time of their repose, or their restoration.  It can only be brought about for them by the agency of external law.  But if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving atoms;—­if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us,—­it must be shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in the activity of our hope; not merely by our desire, but our labor, for the time when the Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the gates of the city of God.  The human clay, now trampled and despised, will not be,—­cannot be,—­ knit into strength and light by accident or ordinances of unassisted fate.  By human cruelty and iniquity it has been afflicted;—­by human mercy and justice it must be raised:  and, in all fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real message of creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly required,—­and content that He should indeed require no more of you,—­than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.

NOTES.

NOTE I.

Page 26.

“That third pyramid of hers.”

Throughout the dialogues, it must be observed that “Sibyl” is addressed (when in play) as having once been the Cumaean Sibyl; and “Egypt” as having been Queen Nitocris,—­the Cinderella and “the greatest heroine and beauty” of Egyptian story.  The Egyptians called her “Neith the Victorious” (Nitocris), and the Greeks “Face of the Rose” (Rhodope).  Chaucer’s beautiful conception of Cleopatra in the “Legend of Good Women,” is much more founded on the traditions of her than on those of Cleopatra; and, especially in its close, modified by Herodotus’s terrible story of the death of Nitocris, which, however, is mythologically nothing more than a part of the deep monotonous ancient dirge for the fulfillment of the earthly destiny of Beauty:  “She cast herself into a chamber full of ashes.”