Romeo and Juliet lay receiving their guests in the vault of the Oapulets, with a strange smile of welcome for all who came. And their presence chamber was bright with candles and flowers, and sweet with the sweet smell of death. The air that had drunk In their wild Words and their last long looks ot heavenly love still hung about the dark corners, as the air where a rose has been holds a little while the memory of its breath. Yes 1 that morning, in that dank but shining tomb, yon might draw into you the very breath of love. The air you breathed had passed through the sweet lungs of Juliet, it had been otherealized with her holy passion, and washed clean with her lovely words. And now, for a little while yet, it feasted on the fair peace ot their glad yonng faces. To-morrow, or the next day, or the next week, they would belong to the unvisited treasure-house of the past, but now this morning of all mornings, this day that could never come again, they still belonged to the real and radiant present. Flowers there are that bloom but once in a hundred years, but here in this tomb had blossomed one of those marvellous flowers that bloom but once throughout eternity. Poets and kings in aftertimes, O men ot Verona, will yearn to have seen what you look upon to day. For yon, you thick and greasy citizens, are chosen out of all time to behold this beauty. There were once in the world thousands of men and women who had beard the very words of Christ as they fell from His lips, words that wo may only read. There have been men, actual, living, foolish men, who have looked on at the valour of Horatius ; men who, from the crowded banka ot the Nile, have watched the living body of Cleopatra step into her gilded barge; men who, standing idle in the streets of Florence, have seen the ,love-light start in the great Dante’s eyes, seen his hand, move to his laden heart, as the- little Beatrice passed him by Among her maidens. Base men of the past, by the indulgent accident of time, have’ been granted to behold these wonders, and now tor you, O men of Verona, a like wonder has been born. 