A Wayside Sketch.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XL, Issue 9254, 2 December 1891, Page 4

A Wayside Sketch.

but the fresh ,Bhpots shall flourish. It ja but now attaining to the stature of a mop. In days to come, when its luxuriance biti spread jar and, wide, in its leaves may bo found the healing of .the nations. | The New World, which began its life fe labour, knew nothing of art. It had to lay its foundations in solid masonry, arjd manual work was altogether then, aa chiefly now, the absolute requirement. The carpenter was a distinct acquisition to the State. The cultivator literally dufe gold into the soil. But the poet was o man unappreciated, because unnecessary. His intelligence led to no practical result. It did not furnish boards nor produce corn. And bread and board to the primitive colonists arc questions of creativo power, not of barter, as in the more advanced communities. The artist then was at a discount, not because he was a glut in the market, but because tkere was no market whatsoever for his wares. No doubt ho had his dreams, even in the roughest settlement, for if not, the dreams of his children would not exist to-day. It ho hid them, however, ho kept them to himself, or shaped ytem iiitojtcmgible' form by producing porh.ips a slight'eccentricifcy in an ordinary churn or a commonplace trowel. The children of his generations have begun to express themselves otherwise today, iSo well have the foundations of this new world been laid that art has risen godlike to crown its minarets. '■ The Temple of Labour, like all true temples, has shot up here and there into graceful spires. The exuberant growth pioduces fine blossoms, and the New World has now achieved its paiutors, its architects, its poets, and its writers. They are rare products, not perennial buttercups. The New World tendency is to check rather than to encourage them Consequently, only tho most wilful and persistent genius oan break through the crust. But the soil is rich, not with chemical manure, a poor substitute for inherent vitality. It ia so rich, that the flowers which appear have ft grace and strength of their own. The depth of the ages is in their fragrance, but the colpur and the form are those of virgin ground: ' This is what strikes us in much literature of the New World. The mind has taken root in fresh soil, and wo are charmed as with tho beauty of the primeval forest. We feel ifc with unusual force in " The Story of an African Farm." The local colouring is so vivid that we can perfectly well see with* the mind what has never been seen by the sight. Art has blossomed afresh in this fine bud. It is no imitation of European genius, but a distinct emanation, as distinct in its way as the art of Christendom from the art of Greeca and Rome. But precisely as the Romish Church borrowed from Greece aud Rome an infinity of pagan ceremonies, iv , order to complete its ideal of aspiration, so philosophy In the New World is deeply tinctured with the religion of the Old. Here is a book, fresh, vivid, youthful, but grafted on nineteen ceuturies of faith and superstition. Laid among rude and even vulgar scenes, there breaks out with spontaneous energy the same enthusiasm which carried the Crusaders to Jerusalem, and the Reformers to the stake. That enthusiasm, however, is not destined to culminate in devotion. Philosophy may 'begin with faith but it ends in doubt. The horizon it surveys is a large one, and with courage, -if with sadness, it determines the unknown to be uuknowabie. All the characters, save one, in the book are colonial, and so colonial that they could not possibly be mistaken for European. And the principal of these, a German lad on a Dutch farm, has fought out to the bitter end the soothsayings of tho Christian teachers, from the severe orthodoxy of ancient times to the sweetness and light of modern apostles. If the New World is to teach us a new ideal of labour, a fresh form of government, a renewed appreciation of art, shall it also teach us another system, of religion — asyatera more akin to the precepts of the Founder of Christianity than aught the world has yet known ? It is not because tho living words of Christ have been overlaid by the density of human, thought through succeeding generations that the words have ceased to live. In such a book as'now confronts us, sceptical though it be, we perceive some of those qualities which in their awful simplicity and naked truthfulness onco confouuded tho Scribes and Pharisees of old. " ' And it was all play, and no one could tell what it had lived and worked for. A striving and-a striving and an ending in nothing/ • This is the ' motive of a ' symphony which produces all tho phases of pur roligious life, from the exalted ! and unquestioning faith of ilie child to the indifierent negation of belief iir the worldWorn man. Through such a transition had Waldo, the German, passed, when a stranger rode \vp to the farm one day in the winter sunshine, and ; -asked of 'the young man a rest under the treed and eomo water for his horse. " Waldo took, the animal to the dam, and returned to offer refreshments to the stranger. He declined; and in silence tho lad went back to carving' a. wooden post, ' whereon he was making rude semblances of men and birds. . . . . > "The stranger watched him for along time. Presently he offered the boy a fivepound nota for his post. The boy refused, and pointed to a grave, and said, ' It is for I him.' 'And who is there V asked the stranger. 'My father.' «If,' said the stranger, 'for such a purpose, why write that upon it ? .... Why say "He sleeps for evor " ? You believe ho will stand up again V 'Do you V aaked the boy, lifting for an instant his" heavy eyea to the stranger's face V Half taken aback, the stranger laughed." This is very clean surgery. There ia no fear in the manipulation. Tho knife jia two-odged. It cuts on' one side into the passionate, • tender-fleshed yearnings of youth, and, on the other hand, into the tough sinews of reflective middle ago. Neither of them believed ifc. The stranger founds a terrible parable upon tho wooden post. Ho is a man of the world, who knows all its so-called joys, and affects to sneer at all its sorrow's! Iv this uncouth German hobbledehoy, whose worldlinossj ia all of mental experience, he finds a trembling mirror of himself. But it is a mirror of unpolluted depths.' Ko be delivera the parable, in which a man /veta out to seek for Truth. Ho began by spreading a golden net,. and into it oamo beautiful singing birds, which sang of immortality and a human God. But he fed them on the grains of credulity, and Truth knew them not. Then Wisdom came to him, and told him he must go into tho Land of Absolute Negation and Denial, after which tho mountains of stern reality begin to rise— beyond them lies Truth. The hunter arose— and h<j went, though two forms of light bado him .stay. But for him was not woman's fj:n.'!fl nor the bubbling wine cup. He left tho Valley of Superstition and the smiles of enchantment, and wcut into tho dark" land beyond. "Some linger there for mouths, some for years, and somo dio there." lo him was it given to pass through, and to bogiu tho a i icont of tho Mountain a

(To he continued)