Of such a nobility, good Lord, deliver us from all envy! As to falling in love with a lady like Mary, such a thing was as far from Jasper's consciousness as if she had been a duchess.

She belonged to another world from his, a world which his world worshiped, waiting.
He might miss her even to death; her absence might, for him, darken the universe as if the sun had withdrawn his brightness; but who thinks of falling in love with the sun, or dreams of climbing nearer to his radiance?
The day will one day come--or what of the long-promised kingdom of heaven ?--when a woman, instead of spending anxious thought on the adornment of her own outward person, will seek with might the adornment of the inward soul of another, and will make that her crown of rejoicing.

Nay, are there none such even now?
The day will come when a man, rather than build a great house for the overflow of a mighty hospitality, will give himself, in the personal labor of outgoing love, to build spiritual houses like St.Paul--a higher art than any of man's invention.

O my brother, what were it not for thee to have a hand in making thy brother beautiful! Be not indignant, my reader: not for a moment did I imagine thee capable of such a mean calling! It is left to a certain school of weak enthusiasts, who believe that such growth, such embellishment, such creation, is all God cares about; these enthusiasts can not indeed see, so blind have they become with their fixed idea, how God could care for anything else.

They actually believe that the very Son of the life-making God lived and died for that, and for nothing else.