and Apollo who went out on a shooting-match. Apollo put his arrow through the centre of the bull's-eye. "I could beat that if I had a mind to try," says Jupiter, and stalks haughtily home. Many a critic of shooting guns and ideas is equally contemptuous, critical, and careful, and so maintains a reputation that one shot or one book of his own would utterly destroy. "Critics are men that have failed," says the sarcastic Disraeli, in "Lothair." They would fail if they tried. This Jupiter critic of sharp shots did try, foolishly, and landed his ball way up the side of the wall. Content, he retreats to his mossy seat by the side of the fountain, and resumes his pen and his true vocation.
How would I love to sit for hours and days on the stone fountain where this is being written, and under the grand cypresses that tower above me with less spreading branches than their twin hemlock of New England, or on the broad parapet that makes a low wall for the front of the cloister. "The sound of the going in the tops" of the pines and hemlocks, which David heard in the tops of the mulberry-trees, comes solemnly on the ear, the same sad wail that they have given forth to the like mortal ear since first these forests were pierced and these walls arose.
How sad are the voices of Nature. The moan of the forest and of the ocean have often been noticed. Was that part of the note of lamentation sent forth from Nature when man fell—that groaning after restoration which she and all that her inhabits still unutterably utter? Why should they not be pleasant sounds, full of music and mirth too? Why should they not laugh for joy? The hills skipped for gladness when their Lord came. So may the whispering of forests be yet full of joyousness. When the earth is redeemed, and man is all holy and all happy within and without, the trees shall clap their hands, and every flower smile audibly its fragrant bliss. Could you mix senses better than in that sentence, Mr. Critic? Mrs. Browning is an authority for part of it; for does not she say of the angels,
"I ween their blessed smile is heard?"
