But the passengers soon discovered they | ments; she bowed at church as often and were lucky in more than weather. Dinner profoundly as possible; she enjoyed nothing was hardly half over before two of those present had begun to attract general attention; and every one was wondering, in whispers, who they could possibly be. One of the objects of this delightful curiosity was a large-boned, middle-aged man, with gleaming spectacles, and lank, untidy hair; whose coat fitted him so ill, and who held his head so high, that it was plain at a glance he was some great celebrity. The other was a beautiful lady of about thirty years of age. No one present had seen her like before. She had the fairest hair and the darkest eyebrows, the largest eyes and the smallest waist conceivable ;-in fact, art and nature had been struggling as to which should do the most for her;-whilst her bearing was so haughty and distinguished, her glance so tender, and her dress so expensive and so fascinating, that she seemed at the same time to defy and to court attention. Evening fell on the ship with a soft, warm witchery. The air grew purple, and the waves began to glitter in the moonlight. The passengers gathered in knots upon the deck. The distinguished strangers were still the subject of conjecture. At last the secret was discovered by the wife of an old colonial judge; and the news spread like wildfire. In a few minutes all knew that there were on board the Australasian no less personages than Professor Paul Darnley and the superb Virginia St. John. II. Miss St. John had, for at least six years, been the most renowned woman in Europe. In Paris and St. Petersburg, no less than in London, her name was equally familiar both to princes and to pot-boys; the eyes of all the world were upon her. Yet in spite of this exposed situation, scandal had proved powerless to wrong her; she defied detraction. Her enemies could but echo her friends' praise of her beauty; her friends could but confirm her enemies' description of her character. Though of birth that might be called almost humble, she had been connected with the heads of many distinguished families; and so general was the affection she inspired, and so winning the ways in which she contrived to retain it, that she found herself at the age of thirty mistress of nothing except a large fortune. She was now converted with surprising rapidity by a ritualistic priest, and she became in a few months a model of piety and devotion. She made lace trimmings for the curate's vest so much as going to confession; she learnt to despise the world. Indeed, such utter dross did her riches now seem to her, that despite all the arguments of her ghostly counsellor, she remained convinced that they were too worthless to offer to the Church, and she saw nothing for it but to still keep them for herself. The mingled humility and discretion of this resolve so won the heart of a gifted colonial bishop, then on a visit to England, that having first assured himself that Miss St. John was sincere in making it, he besought her to share with him his humble mitre, and make him the happiest prelate in the whole Catholic Church. Miss St. John consented. The nuptials were celebrated with the most elaborate ritual, and after a short honeymoon the bishop departed for his South Pacific diocese of the Chasuble Islands, to prepare a home for his bride, who was to follow him by the next steamer. Professor Paul Darnley, in his own walk of life was even more renowned than Virginia had been in hers. He had written three volumes on the origin of life, which he had spent seven years in looking for in infusions of hay and cheese; he had written five volumes on the entozoa of the pig, and two volumes of lectures, as a corollary to these, on the sublimity of human heroism and the whole duty of man. He was renowned all over Europe and America as a complete embodiment of enlightened modern thought. His mind was like a sea, into which the other great minds of the age discharged themselves, and in which all the slight discrepancies of the philosophy of the present century mingled together and formed one harmonious whole. He criticized everything; he took nothing on trust, except the unspeakable sublimity of the human race and its august terrestrial destinies. And in his double capacity of a seer and a savant, he had destroyed all that the world had believed in the past, and revealed to it all that it is going to feel in the future. Nor was he less successful in his own private life. He married, at the age of forty, an excellent evangelical lady, ten years his senior, who wore a green gown, grey cork-screw curls, and who had a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds. Orthodox though she was, Mrs. Darnley was yet proud beyond measure of her husband's world-wide fame, for she did but imperfectly understand the grounds of it. Indeed, the only thing that marred her happiness was the single tenet of his that she had really mastered. This, unluckily, was that he disbelieved in hell. And so, as Mrs. Darnley conceived that that place was designed mainly to hold those who doubted its existence, she daily talked her utmost, and left no text unturned to convince her darling of his very dangerous error. These assiduous arguments soon began to tell. The Professor grew moody and brooding, and he at last suggested to his medical man that a voyage round the world unaccompanied by his wife, was the prescription most needed by his failing patience. Mrs. Darnley at length consented with a fairly good grace. She made her husband pledge himself that he would not be absent for above a twelvemonth, or else, she said, she should immediately come after him. She bade him the tenderest of adieus, and promised to pray till his return for his recovery of a faith in hell. The Professor, who had but exceeded his time by six months, was now on board the Australasian, homeward bound to his wife. Virginia was outward bound to her husband. III. At the appointed time the passengers gathered eagerly round him—all but Virginia, who retired to her cabin when she saw that the preacher wore no surplice; as she thought it would be a mortal sin to listen to a sermon without one. The Professor began amidst a profound silence. He first proclaimed to his hearers the great primary axiom in which all modern thought roots itself. He told them that there was but one order of things, it was so much neater than two; and if we would be certain of anything we must never doubt it. Thus, since countless things exist that the senses can take account of, it is evident that nothing exists that the senses cannot take account of. The senses can take no account of God; therefore God does not exist. Men of science can only see theology in a ridiculous light; therefore theology has no side that is not ridiculous, He then told them a few of the new names that enlightened thinkers had applied to the Christian Deity— how Professor Tyndall had called him an "atom-manufacturer," and Professor Huxley, a "pedantic drill-sergeant." The passen The sensation created by the presence of these two celebrities was profound beyondgers at once saw how demonstrably at vadescription; and the passengers were never weary of watching the gleaming spectacles and the square-toed boots of the one, and the liquid eyes and the ravishing toilettes of the other. There were three curates, who, having been very quick in making Virginia's acquaintance, soon sang at nightfall with her a beautiful vesper hymn. And so lovely did the strains sound, and so devotional did Virginia look, that most of the passengers the night after joined in a repetition of this touching evening office. The Professor, as was natural, held quite aloof; and pondered over a new species of bug, which he had found very plentiful in his berth. But it soon occurred to him that he often heard the name of God being uttered otherwise than in swearing. He listened more attentively to the sounds which he had at first set down as negro melodies: and he soon became convinced that they were something whose very existence he despised himself for remembering-namely, Christian hymns. He then thought of the three curates, whose existence he despised himself for remembering also. And the conviction rapidly dawned on him, that though the passengers seemed fully alive to his fame as a man of science, they could yet know very little of all that science had done for them; and of the death-blow it had given to the foul superstitions of the past. He therefore resolved that next day he would preach them a lay-sermon. riance with fact was all religion, and they laughed with a sense of humor that was quite new to them. The professor's tones then became more solemn; and, having extinguished error, he proceeded to unveil the brilliant light of truth. He showed them how, viewed by modern science, all existence is a chain, with a gas at one end, and no one knows what at the other; and how Humanity is a link somewhere; but, holy and awful thought!-we can none of us tell where. "However," he proceeded, "of one thing we can be quite certain: all that is, is matter; the laws of matter are eternal, and we cannot act or think without conforming to them and if," he said, "we would be solemn, and high, and happy, and heroic, and saintly, we have but to strive and struggle to do what we cannot for an instant avoid doing. Yes," he exclaimed, “as the sublime Tyndall tells us, let us struggle to attain to a deeper knowledge of matter, and a more faithful conformity to its laws!" The Professor would have proceeded; but the weather had been rapidly growing rough and he here became violently sea-sick. dimly through the fog to the leeward. The pletely true. You are not happy now; you boats were got in readiness. A quantity of provisions and of the passengers' baggage was already stowed in the cutter; when the clouds parted, the sun came out again, and the storm subsided almost as quickly as it arose. IV. No sooner were the ship's damages in a fair way to be repaired than the Professor resumed his sermon. He climbed into the cutter, which was still full of the passengers' baggage, and sat down on the largest of Virginia's boxes. This so alarmed Virginia that she followed the Professor into the cutter to keep an eye on her property; but she did not forget to stop her ears with her fingers, that she might not be guilty of listening to an un-surpliced minister. probably never will be. But that is of little moment. Only conform faithfully to the laws of matter, and your children's children will be happy in the course of a few centu turies; and you will like that far better than being happy yourselves. Only consider the matter in this light, and you yourselves will become happy also; and whatever you say and whatever you do, think only of the effect it will have five hundred years afterwards." At these solemn words, the anxious faces grew calm. An awful sense of the responsibility of each one of us, and the infinite consequences of every human act, was filling the hearts of all; when by a faithful conformity to the laws of matter, the boiler blew up, and the Australasian went down. In an instant the air was rent with yells and cries; and all the Humanity that was on board the vessel was busy, as the Professor expressed The Professor took up the thread of his it, uniting itself with the infinite azure of the discourse just where he had broken it off. past. Paul and Virginia, however, floated Every circumstance favoured him. The calm quietly away in the cutter, together with the sea was sparkling under the gentlest breeze; baggage and provisions. Virginia was made all Nature seemed suffused with gladness; and almost senseless by the suddenness of the at two miles' distance was an enchanting catastrophe; and on seeing five sailors sink island, green with every kind of foliage, and within three yards of her, she fainted dead glowing with the hues of a thousand flowers. away. The Professor begged her not to take The Professor, having reminded his hearers it so much to heart, as these were the very of what nonsense they now thought all the men who had got the cutter in readiness; Christian teachings, went on to show them" and they are therefore," he said, "still the blessed results of this. Since the God that we once called all-holy is a fable, that Humanity is all-holy must be a fact. Since we shall never be sublime, and solemn, and unspeakably happy hereafter, it is evident that we can be sublime, and solemn, and unspeakably happy here. "This," said the Professor, "is the new Gospel. It is founded on exact thought. It is the gospel of the kingdom of man; and had I only here a microscope and a few chemicals, I could demonstrate its eternal truth to you. There is no heaven to seek for; there is no hell to shun. We have nothing to strive and live for except to be unspeakably happy." This eloquence was received with enthusiasm. The captain in particular, who had a wife in every port he touched at, was overjoyed at hearing that there was no hell; and he sent for all his crew, that they might learn the good news likewise. But soon the general gladness was marred by a sound of weeping. Three-fourths of the passengers, having had time to reflect a little, began exclaiming that as a matter of fact they were really completely miserable, and that for various reasons they could never be anything else. "My friends," said the Professor, quite undaunted, that is doubtless com 44 really alive in the fact of our happy escape." Virginia, however, being quite insensible, the Professor turned to the last human being still to be seen above the waters, and shouted to him not to be afraid of death, as there was certainly no hell, and that his life, no matter how degraded and miserable, had been a glorious mystery, full of infinite significance. The next moment the struggler was snapped up by a shark. The cutter, meanwhile, borne by a current, had been drifting rapidly towards the island. And the Professor, spreading to the breeze Virginia's beautiful lace parasol, soon brought it to the shore on a beach of the softest sand. V. The scene that met Paul's eyes as he landed was one of extreme loveliness. He had run the boat ashore in a little fairy bay, full of translucent waters, and fringed with silvery sands. On either side it was protected by fantastic rocks, and in the middle it opened inland to an enchanting valley, where tall tropical trees made a grateful shade, and where the ground was carpeted with the softest moss and turf. Paul's first care was for his fair companion He spread a costly cashmere shawl on the beach, and placed her, still fainting, on this. In a few moments she opened her eyes; but was on the point of fainting again as the horrors of the last half-hour came back to her, when she caught sight in the cutter of the largest of her own boxes, and she began to recover herself. Paul begged her to remain quiet while he went to reconnoitre. He had hardly proceeded twenty yards into the valley, when to his infinite astonishment he came on a charming cottage, built under the shadow of a broad tree, with a broad verandah, plate-glass windows, and red windowblinds. His first thought was that this could be no desert island at all, but some happy | European settlement. 'But on approaching the cottage, it proved to be quite untenanted, and from the cobwebs woven across the doorway it seemed to have been long abandoned. Inside there was abundance of luxurious furniture; the floors were covered with gorgeous Indian carpets; and there was a pantry well stocked with plate and glass and table-linen. The Professor could not tell what to make of it, till, examining the structure more closely, he found it composed mainly of a ship's timbers. This seemed to tell its own tale; and he at once concluded that he and Virginia were not the first castaways who had been forced to make the island for some time their dwelling-place. Overjoyed at this discovery, the Professor hastened back to Virginia. She was by this time quite recovered, and was kneeling on the cashmere shawl, with a rosary in her hands designed especially for the use of Anglo-Catholics, and was alternately lifting up her eyes in gratitude to Heaven, and casting them down in anguish at her torn and crumpled dress. The poor Professor was horrified at the sight of a human being in this degrading attitude of superstition. But as Virginia quitted it with alacrity as soon as ever he told his news to her, he hoped he might soon convert her into a sublime and holy Utilitarian. The first thing she besought him to do was to carry her biggest box to this charming cottage, that she might change her clothes, and appear in something fit to be seen in. The Professor most obligingly at once did as she asked him; and whilst she was busy at her toilette, he got from the cutter what provisions he could, and proceeded to lay the table. When all was ready, he ring a gong which he found suspended in the lobby; Virginia appeared shortly in a beautiful pink dressing-gown, embroidered with silver flowers; and just before sunset, the two sat down to a really excellent meal. The bread-tree at the door of the cottage con tributed some beautiful French rolls; close at hand also they discovered a butter-tree; and the Professor had produced from the cutter a variety of salt and potted meats, patéde-foie-gras, cakes, preserved fruit, and some bottles of fine champagne. This last helped much to raise their spirits. Virginia found it very dry, and exactly suited to her palate. She had but drunk five glasses of it, when her natural smile returned to her, though she was much disappointed because Paul took no notice of her dressing-gown; and when she had drunk three glasses more, she quietly went to sleep on the sofa. The moon had by this time risen in dazzling splendour; and the Professor went out and lighted a cigar. All during dinner there had been a feeling of dull despair in his heart, which even the champagne did not dissipate. But now, as he surveyed in the moonlight the wondrous Paradise in which his strange fate had cast him, his mood changed. The air was full of the scents of a thousand night-smelling flowers; the sea murmured on the beach in soft, voluptuous cadences. The Professor's cigar was excellent. He now saw his situation in a truer light. Here was a bountiful island, where earth unbidden brought forth all her choicest fruits; and most of the luxuries of civilization had already been wafted thither. Existence here seemed to be purified from all its evils. Was not this the very condition of things which all the sublimest and exactest thinkers of modern times had been dreaming and lecturing, and writing books about for a good half-century? Here was a place where Humanity could do justice to itself, and realize those glorious destinies which all exact thinkers take for granted must be in store for it. True, from the mass of Humanity he was completely cut away; but Virginia was his companion. Holiness, and solemnity, and unspeakably significant happiness, did not, he argued, depend on the multiplication table. He and Virginia represented Humanity as well as a million couples. They were a complete Humanity in themselves, and Humanity in a perfectible shape; and the very next day they would make preparations for fulfilling their holy destiny, and being as solemnly and unspeakably happy as it was their stern duty to be. The Professor turned his eyes upwards to the starry heavens; and a sense came over him of the eternity and the immensity of Nature, and the demonstrable absence of any intelligence that guided it. These reflections naturally brought home to him with more vividness the stupendous and boundless importance of Man. His bosom swelled violently; and he cried aloud, his eyes still fixed on the firmament, "Oh, important All! oh, important Me!" When he came back to the cottage, he found Virginia just getting off the sofa, and preparing to go off to bed. She was too sleepy even to say good-night to him, and with evident want of temper was tugging at the buttons of her dressing-gown. Ah," she murmured as she left the room, "if God, in his infinite mercy, had only spared my maid!" 66 Virginia's evident discontent gave profound pain to Paul. "How solemn," he exclaimed, "for half Humanity to be discontented!" But he was still more disturbed at the appeal to a chimerical manufacturer of atoms; and he exclaimed, in yet more sorrowful tones, "How solemn for half Humanity to be sunk lower than the beasts by superstition !" However, he hoped that these stupendous evils might, under the present favourable conditions, vanish in the course of a few days' progress; and he went to bed, full of august auguries. VI. Next morning he was up betimes; and the prospects of Humanity looked more glorious than ever. He gathered some of the finest pats from the butter-tree, and some fresh French rolls from the bread-tree. He discovered a cow close at hand, that allowed him at once to milk it; and a little roast pig ran up to him out of the underwood, and fawning on him with its trotters, said, "Come, eat me." The Professor vivisected it before Virginia's door, that its automatic noise, which the vulgar call cries of pain, might awaken her; and he then set it in a hot dish on the table. "It has come! it has come!" he shouted, rapturously, as Virginia entered the room, this time in a blue silk dressing-gown, embroidered with flowers of gold. "What has come?" said Virginia, pettishly, for she was suffering from a terrible headache, and the Professor's loud voice annoyed her. "You don't mean to say that we are rescued, are we?" "It is not nonsense," said the Professor. "It is deducible from the teachings of John Stuart Mill, of Auguste Comte, of Mr. Frederic Harrison, and of all the exact thinkers who have cast off superstition, and who adore Humanity." Virginia meanwhile ate paté-de-foie-gras, of which she was passionately fond; and, growing a little less sullen, she at last admitted that they were lucky in having at least the necessaries of life left to them. "But as for happiness-there is nothing to do here, there is no church to go to, and you don't seem to care a bit for my dressing-gown. What have we got to make us happy?" "Humanity," replied the Professor eagerly, "Humanity, that divine entity, which is of course capable of everything that is fine and invaluable, and is the object of indescribable emotion to all exact thinkers. And what is Humanity?" he went on more earnestly, "You and I are Humanity—you and I are that august existence. You already are all the world to me; and I very soon shall be all the world to you. Adored being, it will be my mission and my glory to compel you to live for me. And then, as modern philosophy can demonstrate, we shall both of us be significantly and unspeakably happy." For a few moments Virginia merely stared at Paul. Suddenly she turned quite pale, her lips quivered, and exclaiming, "How dare you!-and I, too, the wife of a bishop!" she left the room in hysterics. The Professor could make nothing of this. Though he had dissected many dead women, he knew very little of the hearts of live ones. A sense of shyness overpowered him. He felt embarrassed, he could not tell why, at being thus left alone with Virginia. He lit a cigar, and went out. Here was a to-do indeed, he thought. How would progress be possible if one half of Humanity misunderstood the other? He was thus musing, when suddenly a voice startled him; and in another moment a man came rushing up to him, with every demonstration of joy. cumstances over which I have no control." "Oh, my dear master! oh, emancipator of the human intellect! and is it indeed you? “Yes,” answered Paul, solemnly; "we Thank God!I beg pardon for my unare rescued from all the pains and imperfec-speakable blasphemy-I mean, thank cirtions of a world that has not learnt how to conform to the laws of matter, and is but imperfectly acquainted with the science of sociology. It is therefore inevitable that, the evils of existence being thus removed, we shall both be solemnly, stupendously, and unspeakably happy." "Nonsense!" said Virginia, snappishly, who thought the Professor was joking. It was one of the three curates, whom Paul had supposed drowned, but who now related how he had managed to swim ashore, despite the extreme length of his black clerical coat. "These rags of superstition," he said, "did their best to drown me. But I survive in spite of them, to covet truth and to reject error. Thanks to your glorious |