"It is rather sad," sighed Virginia, as she dived into a box of French chocolate-creams, "to think that all the poor people are drowned that these things belonged to."

They are not dead," said the Professor: "they still live on this holy and stupendous earth. They live in the use we are making of all they had got together. The owner of those chocolate-creams is immortal because you are eating them."

Virginia licked her lips, and said, "Nonsense!" "It is not nonsense," said the Professor.

Humanity."

"It is the religion of

All day they were busy, and the time passed pleasantly enough. Wines, provisions, books, and china ornaments were carried up to the cottage and bestowed in proper places. Virginia filled the glasses in the drawing-room with gorgeous leaves and flowers; and declared by the evening, as she looked round her, that she could almost fancy herself in St. John's Wood.

"See," said the Professor, "how rapid is the progress of material civilization! Humanity is now entering on the fruits of ages. Before long it will be in a position to be unspeakably happy."

Virginia retired to bed early. The Professor took the curate out with him to look at the stars; and promised to lend him some writings of the modern philosophers, which would make him more perfect in the new view of things. They said good-night, murmuring together that there was certainly no God, that Humanity was very important, and that everything was very solemn.

VIII.

Next morning the curate began studying a number of essays that the Professor lent him, all written by exact thinkers, who disbelieved in God, and thought Humanity adorable and most important. Virginia lay on the sofa, and sighed over one of Miss Broughton's novels; and it occurred to the Professor that the island was just the place where, if anywhere, the missing link might be found.

"Ah!" he exclaimed; "all is still progress. Material progress came to an end yesterday. Mental progress has begun to-day. One third of Humanity is cultivating sentiment; another third is learning to covet truth. I, the remaining and most enlightened third, will go and seek it. Glorious, solemn Humanity! I will go and look about for its arboreal ancestor."

Every step the Professor took he found the island more beautiful. But he came back to luncheon, having been unsuccessful in his search. Events had marched quickly in his absence. Virginia was at the beginning of her third volume; and the curate had skimmed over so many essays, that he professed himself able to give a thorough account of the want of faith that was in him.

After luncheon the three sat together in easy chairs, in the verandah, sometimes talking, sometimes falling into a half-doze. They all agreed that they were wonderfully comfortable, and the Professor said

"All Humanity is now at rest, and in utter peace. It is just taking breath, before it becomes unspeakably and significantly happy."

He would have said more, but he was here startled by a piteous noise of crying, and the three found themselves confronted by an old woman, dripping with sea-water, and with an expression on her face of the utmost misery. They soon recognized her as one of the passengers on the ship. She told them how she had been floated ashore on a spar, and how she had been sustained by a little roast pig, that kindly begged her to eat it, having first lain in her bosom to restore her to warmth. She was now looking for her son.

“And if I cannot find him," said the old woman, "I shall never smile again. He has half broken my heart," she went on, "by his wicked ways. But if I thought he was dead-dead in the midst of his sins, it would be broken altogether; for in that case he must certainly be in hell."

"Old woman," said the Professor, very slowly and solemnly, "be comforted. I announce to you that your son is alive."

"But

"Oh, bless you, sir, for that word!" cried the old woman. where is he? Have you seen him? Are you sure that he is living?" "I am sure of it," said the Professor, "because enlightened thought shows me that he cannot be anything else. It is true that I saw him sink for a third time in the sea, and that he was then snapped up by a shark. But he is as much alive as ever in his posthumous activities. He has made you wretched after him; and that is his future life. Become an exact thinker, and you will see that this is so. Old woman," added the Professor, solemnly, "you are your son in hell."

At this the old woman flew into a terrible rage.

"In hell, sir!" she exclaimed; "me in hell!-a poor lone woman. like me! How dare you!" And she sank back in a chair and

fainted.

"Alas!" said the Professor, "thus is misery again introduced into the world. A fourth part of Humanity is now miserable."

The curate answered promptly that if no restoratives were given her, she would probably die in a few minutes. "And to let her die," he said, "is clearly our solemn duty. It will be for the greatest happiness of the greatest number."

"No," said the Professor; "for our sense of pity would then be wounded, and the happiness of all of us would be marred by that." "Excuse me," said the curate; "but exact thought shows me that pity for others is but the imagining of their misfortune falling on ourselves. Now, we can none of us imagine ourselves exactly in the old woman's case; therefore it is quite impossible that we can pity her."

"But," said the Professor, "such an act would violate our ideas of justice."

"You are wrong again," said the curate; "for exact thought shows me that the love of justice is nothing but the fear of suffering injustice. If we were to kill strong men, we might naturally fear that strong men would kill us. But whatever we do to fainting old women, we cannot expect that fainting old women will do anything to us in return."

"Your reasoning cannot be sound," said the Professor; "for it would lead to the most horrible conclusions. I will solve the difficulty better. I will make the old woman happy, and therefore fit to live. Old woman," he exclaimed, "you are yourself by your own unhappiness expiating your son's sins. Do but think of that, and you will become unspeakably happy."

Meanwhile, however, the old woman had died. When the Professor discovered this he was somewhat shocked; but at length with a sudden change of countenance, "We neither of us did it," he exclaimed; "her death is no act of ours. It is part of the eternal not-ourselves that makes for righteousness-righteousness, which is, as we all know, but another name for happiness. Let us adore the event with reverence." "Yes," said the curate, "we are well rid of her. She was an immoral old woman; for happiness is the test of morality, and she was very unhappy."

"On the contrary," said the Professor, "she was a moral old woman; for she has made us happy by dying so very opportunely. Let us speak well of the dead. Her death has been a holy and a blessed one. She has conformed to the laws of matter. Thus is unhappiness destined to fade out of the world. Quick! let us tie a bag of shot to all the sorrow and evil of Humanity, which, after all, is only a fourth part of it; and let us sink her in the bay close at hand, that she may catch lobsters for us."

IX.

"At last," said the Professor, as they began dinner that evening, "the fulness of time has come. All the evils of Humanity are removed, and progress has come to an end because it can go no further. We have nothing now to do, but to be unspeakably and significantly happy."

The champagne flowed freely. Our friends ate and drank of the best, their spirits rose; and Virginia admitted that this was really "jolly." The sense of the word pleased the Professor, but its sound seemed below the gravity of the occasion; so he begged her to say "sublime" instead. "We can make it mean," he said, "just the same, but we prefer it for the sake of its associations."

It soon, however, occurred to him that eating and drinking were hardly delights sufficient to justify the highest state of human emotion;

and he began to fear he had been feeling sublime prematurely ;' but in another moment he recollected he was an altruist, and that the secret of their happiness was not that any one of them was happy, but that they each knew the others were.

"Yes, my dear curate," said the Professor, "what I am enjoying is the champagne that you drink, and what you are enjoying is the champagne that I drink. This is altruism; this is benevolence; this is the sublime outcome of enlightened modern thought. The pleasures of the table, in themselves, are low and beastly ones; but if we each of us are only glad because the others are enjoying them, they become holy and glorious beyond description."

66

They do," cried the curate rapturously, "indeed they do! I will drink another bottle for your sake. It is sublime!" he said as he tossed off three glasses. "It is significant!" he said as he finished three more. "Tell me, my dear, do I look significant?" he added, as he turned to Virginia, and suddenly tried to crown the general bliss by kissing her.

Virginia started back, looking fire and fury at him. The Professor was completely astounded by an occurrence so unnatural, and exclaimed in a voice of thunder, "Morality, sir,-remember morality! How dare you upset that which Professor Huxley tells us must be for ever strong enough to hold its own?"

But the last glass of champagne had put the curate beyond the reach of exact thought. He tumbled under the table, and the Professor carried him off to bed.

X.

The Professor, like most serious thinkers, knew but little of that trifle commonly called "the world." He had never kissed any one except his wife; even that he did as seldom as possible; and the curate lying dead drunk was the first glimpse he had of what, par excellence, is called "life." But though the scene just described was thus a terrible shock to him, in one way it gave him an unlooked-for comfort. He felt that even yet things were not quite as sublime as they should be. He now saw the reason. "Of course," he said, "existence cannot be perfect, so long as one third of Humanity makes a beast of itself. A little more progress is still necessary."

He hastened to explain this next morning to Virginia, and begged her not to be alarmed at the curate's scandalous conduct. "Immorality," he said, "is but a want of success in attaining our own happiness. It is evidently most immoral for the curate to be kissing you; and therefore kissing you would not really conduce to his happiness. I will convince him of this solemn truth in a very few moments. Then the essential dignity of human nature will become at once apparent, and we shall all of us at last begin to be unspeakably happy."

He

The curate, however, altogether declined to be convinced. maintained stoutly that to kiss Virginia would be the greatest pleasure that Humanity could offer him. "And if it is immoral as well as pleasant," he added, "I should like it all the better."

At this the Professor gave a terrible groan; he dropped almost fainting into a chair; he hid his face in his hands; and murmured halfarticulately, "Then I can't tell what to do!" In another instant, however, he recovered himself; he fixed a dreadful look on the curate, and said, "That last statement of yours cannot be true; for if it were, it would upset all my theories. It is a fact that can be proved and verified, that if you kissed Virginia it would make you miserable."

"Pardon me," said the curate, rapidly moving towards her, "your notion is a remnant of superstition; I will explode it by a practical experiment."

The Professor caught hold of the curate's coat-tails, and forcibly pulled him back into his seat.

"If you dare attempt it," he said, "I will kick you soundly, and, shocking, immoral man! you will feel miserable enough then."

The curate was a terrible coward, and very weak as well. "You are a great hulking fellow," he said, eyeing the Professor; "and I am of a singularly delicate build. I must, therefore, conform to the laws of matter, and give in." He said this in a very sulky voice; and, going out of the room, slammed the door after him.

A radiant expression suffused the face of the Professor. "See," he said to Virginia, "the curate's conversion is already half accomplished. In a few hours more he will be rational, he will be moral, he will be solemnly and significantly happy."

The Professor talked like this to Virginia the whole morning; but in spite of all his arguments she declined to be comforted. "It is all very well," she said, "whilst you are in the way. But as soon as your back is turned, I know he will be at me again."

"Will you never," said Paul, by this time a little irritated, " will you never listen to exact thought? The curate is now reflecting; and a little reflection must inevitably convince him that he does not really care to kiss you, and that it would give him very little real pleasure to do so."

"Stuff!" exclaimed Virginia, with a sudden vigour at which the Professor was thunderstruck. "I can tell you," she went on, "that better men than he have borne kicks for my sake; and to kiss me is the only thing that that little man cares about.-What shall I do!" she exclaimed bursting into tears. "Here is one of you insulting me by trying to kiss me; and the other insulting me by saying that I am not worth being kissed!"

"Ah, me!" groaned the poor Professor in an agony, "here is one third of Humanity plunged in sorrow; and another third has not yet freed itself from vice. When, when will sublimity begin?"