fulfilment look forward to still greater undertakings. Such minds wear the beauty of promise,
"that which sets
The budding rose above the rose full blown."
The realization of ideal promise is not merely intellectual power and practical attainment. A man may have these, and yet lack a rich mind. Sympathy, pure ideals, morality, religious sentiment belong to a complete nature. Without them one is not a fit leader or a choice companion. A wholly irreligious man is not conscious of his soul. As the years advance, with the progressive man there is more heart, more simplicity and truth, more moral and spiritual interest.
In the "Memoir of Lord Tennyson" by his son, a chapter on the "In Memoriam" throws brilliant side lights on the essential character of the great poet. One would almost take the truths there expressed as his creed, and the inner life there revealed as the consummation of a personal ideal. We note his "splendid faith in the growing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the individual man;" his belief that "it is the great purpose which consecrates life;" his feeling that "only under the inspiration of ideals, and with his 'sword bathed in heaven,' can a man combat the cynical indifference, the intellectual selfishness, the sloth of will, the utilitarian materialism of a transition age;" his faith that "the truth must be larger, purer, nobler than any mere human expression of it;" his affirmation that, if you "take away belief in the self-conscious personality of God, you take away the backbone of the world." He believed in prayer. In
