than ability, and godliness than gain. Shall the evil one for ever haunt humanity? Hopefully, no! no! no!
I have an Italian painting which is emblematic of this contest between evil and good on the earth. It is a night scene on the shores of Sicily. The artist stands amidst the broken columns and disjointed arches of a villa, beautiful in its ruin, even as man in his fall. He overlooks the blue sea. There is an unwonted blending of light and shadow on earth, wave and sky. Light and shadow! Rather lights and shadow; for two lights reveal a scene of loveliness and terror. Yon red and lurid light bursts from the top of Ætna in eruption. Yon white and tranquil light gleams from the moon, through rolling clouds of smoke—gleams in broken silver on the wave, on the ruin, against the lining of the cloud, and mingling with the lurid blaze, bepaints the mountain sides, the half-hid villages by the shore, and interpenetrates the moving masses of smoke, which the sea-breeze bears away from the peak to the inland. The chaste light of heaven thus blends with the impure fires of earth, as the good struggles with the evil,
Lo! ships skim the sea, full-rigged and swift; for interchange goes on amidst the elemental strife. In the light which fills the rents of the ruin, in the foreground, sits a rustic maiden in picturesque white boddice and scarlet kirtle, blushing at the tale of love whispered by the shepherd at her side; for love survives, though polluted Pompeiis perish! The fire-mount rises from the sea, whose waves, moonlit and musical, spring to kiss its throbbing feet and cool its raging fire; for joy is not wholly hushed by the earthquake which "smacks its rumbling lips," eager to devour. The lights reveal, amidst the villages and through the smoke, many a spire of God's church, pointing with silent emphasis upward.
But a pall overhangs the picture; yet through it the allegory shines. The shadow of evil beclouds human destiny, yet through it we see commerce knitting man to man by the amenities of intercourse; love blending heart to heart by her solaces of sweetness; joy making music on the sands of time; and religion pointing out the path of aspiration to a better home, where throes of earth and
