of humble obedience, self-denial, and purity, hence they took the vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. However, married persons were not excluded from their brotherhood; they were only bound by the first vow, that of obedience.

Besides frequent prayer, meditations, communions, the practice of auricular confession was strictly held among them,-this indeed was a sine qua non for any person desiring to enter the brotherhood.

It seems that the community at Valle Crucis was only a branch of an order established by the Bishop of North Carolina, Dr. Ives, under the title of "The Brotherhood of the Cross."

The institution at Valle Crucis having encountered some opposition from the "Diocesan Convention," it was broken up, and the grounds disposed of. This brotherhood and one of a similar character at Nashota, Wisconsin, mark the same tendencies as those which actuated the movers at Brook Farm and Fruitlands, but in a more ecclesiastical aspect, and in one thing more they are alike—in their results,they met with defeat instead of success, hopelessness instead of blessedness.

In sympathy and in truth we may say of these unsuccessful efforts with the poet :

"O! wasted strength! O! light and calm
And better hopes so vainly given!

Like rain upon the herbless sea,

Poured down by too benignant heaven-
We see not stars unfixed by winds,
Or lost in aimless thunder-peals,

But man's large soul, the star supreme,
In guideless whirl how oft it reels? "*

* Sterling.

X.

Is there a Wath.

"Is there no refuge but the tomb

For all this timeless spirit bloom?
Does earth no other prospect yield
But one broad, barren, battle-field ? "

MILNES.

ERE all these high hopes but idle fancies

WERE all but

and splendid insufficiencies ? Were all these holy aspirations but illusions and deceptive dreams? Were these heroic sacrifices but evidences of minds deluded ? Then is life a

mockery, and true it is that,

Whose soul seeks the perfect,

Which his eyes seek in vain."*

For, to give to man capacities and those the highest and noblest of his soul, to give to him wants the deepest and most sacred of his heart, to condemn him to seek for their realization, to hold over his head their proper objects like the apple of Tantalus, and destine him never to reach them; this is not the work of a loving Deity, but cruelty the most refined of a fiend. If such be life, it is a curse; and he

tells the truth of man who says,

"Thy curse it was to see and hear
Beyond to-day's scant hemisphere,
Beyond all mists of doubt and fear,
Into a life more true and clear,

And dearly thou dost rue it."†

And it is not to be wondered at, that all our modern and youthful poets sing of Death, not as an “unknown form of a higher life," but invoke his shaft, as an escape from the mockery and wearisomeness of this-saying with Schiller,

"Would this weary life were spent,

Would this fruitless search were o'er!"

And if such be life and such its promises, who would not say from the depths of his soul in tones of earnestness,

"And rather than such visions, bless

The gloomiest depths of nothingness."*

But Mr. Emerson is wrong, not in saying that man loves the best and sees the perfect; no, to this every heart and head consents, but that he seeks in vain a realization of what he loves and sees. This is the error of Mr. Emerson and the whole school of this class of men. Our curse is not that we see into a life more clear and true, this is the loftiest attribute of man, but that man has lost or not yet discovered the way that leads to the possession of such a life. This is the fiend, here lies the curse, did these men but know it.

There is a way. Has it been lost? or has it not yet been found? That, indeed, would be a sad plight for humanity, and no less a libel upon

* Sterling.