no specific meaning; it says nothing, but it appears to accord and sympathize with the sense conveyed by the song’s words.  But gloomy hills and skies and woods are to desponding views of life and man, even more than the sympathetic chords, in themselves meaningless.  The gloomy world not merely accords with the desponding views, but seems somehow to back them.  You are conscious of a great environing Presence standing by and looking on approvingly.  From all points in the horizon a voice, soft and undefined, seems to whisper to your heart, All true, all too true.

Now, there are human beings who, in the great things they say and do, seldom fail of having this great, vague backing.  There are others whom the grand current for the most part sets against.  It is part of the great fact of Luck—­the indubitable fact that there are men, women, ships, horses, railway-engines, whole railways, which are lucky, and others which are unlucky.  I do not believe in the common theory of Luck, but no thoughtful or observant man can deny the fact of it.  And in no fashion does it appear more certainly than in this, that in the case of some men cross-accidents are always marring them, and the effect they would fain produce.  The system of things is against them.  They are not in every case unsuccessful, but whatever success they attain is got by brave fighting against wind and tide.  At college they carried off many honours, but no such luck ever befel them as that some wealthy person should offer during their days some special medal for essay or examination, which they would have gained as of course.  There was no extra harvest for them to reap:  they could do no more than win all that was to be won.  They go to the bar, and they gradually make their way; but the day never comes on which their leader is suddenly taken ill, and they have the opportunity of earning a brilliant reputation by conducting in his absence a case in which they are thoroughly prepared.  They go into the Church, and earn a fair character as preachers; but Ihe living they would like never becomes vacant, and when they are appointed to preach upon some important occasion, it happens that the ground is a foot deep with snow.

Several years since, on a Sunday in July, I went to afternoon service at a certain church by the sea-shore.  The incumbent of that church was a young clergyman of no ordinary talent; he is a distinguished professor now.  It was a day of drenching rain and howling hurricane; the sky was black, as in mid-winter; the waves were breaking angry and loud upon the rocks hard by.  The weather the previous week had been beautiful; the weather became beautiful again the next morning.  There came just the one gloomy and stormy summer day.  The young parson could not forsee the weather.  What more fitting subject for a July Sunday than the teachings of the beautiful season which was passing over?  So the text was, Thou hast made summer:  it was a sermon on summer,