16. "Decked in rainbow woof of gossamer, 17. "Gay they woo and dance, and feast, and sing, As if every leaf around should ring 18. "But for man 'tis ever sad to see, Joys like his that he must not partake, 'Mid a separate world, a people's glee In whose hearts his heart no joy could wake. 19. "Fare-ye-well, ye tiny race of elves; 20. "And thou, mountain realm of ancient wood, Where my feet and thoughts have strayed so long, Now thy old gigantic brotherhood With a ghostlier vastness round me throng. 21. "Mound, and Cliff, and Crag that none may scale With your serried trunks and wrestling boughs, Like one living presence ye prevail, And o'erhang me with Titanian brows. 22. "In your Being's mighty depth of Power, 23. In this knotted stem whereon I lean, And the dome above of countless leaves, 24. "Yet, O Nature, less is all of thine Than thy borrowings from our human breast; 25. "Hark! a sound of mortal feet is nigh, 26. "There, beside the fearless child, I wend, The effect of these papers on Musgrave's mind was very strong. He had hardly ever read any thing not in conformity with his own habits of mind and opinions. From all books beyond his favourite circle, consisting of such works as A-Kempis, Jeremy Taylor, Herbert, and Fenelon, he turned away with indifference or dislike. His was a sort of unchanging moonshine of the mind. Now he felt as if thrown into a dungeon, with a dim lamp burning on one side, and a single sharp ray of sunlight piercing on the other. Much that appeared in Henry's Papers he could not at all enter into. But he saw enough to understand that his own previous world was a smaller one than he had imagined. Without losing his faith in the great truths which he had never for an instant of his life permitted himself to doubt, he now felt the sphere of his conceptions suddenly and painfully enlarged, and an unexpected im portance given to thoughts which had hardly before suggested themselves to him. He had not read Walsingham's Poems, and the one which he had now lighted on excited in him a new interest. It exhibited a composure of mind which he had fancied impossible unless connected with his own opinions; and at the same time, having read very little poetry, he fancied he found in it a free and clear painting of many images, drawn from nature, and a steady, untremulous, self-consciousness, which, as thus united together, and not derived exclusively from religious devotion, seemed to him very wonderful. It may thus become intelligible, that when the fated hour arrived, and Arthur could look back on Edmonstone, Harcourt, Wilson, Hastings, and Musgrave as so many distinct selves, he turned from them all, and hoped to rise on bolder wings, and command a wider air, when he elected to assume the being of Walsingham. CHAPTER VIII. it may be altogether a mistake of mine; and no doubt it seems more probable that I am in error than he. Extracts from Maria's Note-Book. Walsingham has now been here on a visit for two days. I am not sure, but I suspect, that he plotted to induce my aunt to invite him; and although it seems absurd, I can now hardly help fancying that it was on my account he wished to come. I cannot see him without interest, and a certain pleasure. But I find that this feeling is always accompanied by dissatisfaction, and almost by self-reproach, when it is not justified by an equal sense of reliance and reverence. His sympathies seem to me kind and right, and wonderfully impartial and comprehensive; and of his talents and accomplishments, there can be, I suppose, no doubt. But I cannot shake off the persuasion that there is something wanting in him to gain my full admiration and esteem. I can imagine that a person who had never beheld a complete Gothic cathedral might see a beautiful tower of such a building, massive and profusely ornamented, and in which all that had ever been begun was quite finished, and yet feel something to be wanting, though he might not be able to tell that it was the sky-pointing spire which ought to have crowned the tower. As to Walsingham, however, Oh, how hard it is to keep one's life at once clear, full, fresh, and steady! How I find myself wavering into sickly fancies, indulging selfish humours, repining at my situation as if it were not a necessary portion of my existence, and as if that were not, on the whole, a blessing. My God! strengthen me. The image of Arthur has darkened, even saddened, my mind. But for how much hope, energy, feeling, am I not also indebted to him. I look upon the stars or into the calm depth of pure waters, and I seem to know then that although here and now we are divided, there is some distant imperishable world in which our spirits ever dwell together. Meanwhile, the past lies wide and dark be. hind me. The future moves onward with swift feet, and its footsteps on that field of still smoking ashes are what we call the present. Dear, dear, Arthur! though I cannot see you, nor even hear of you, some day of unclouded revelation will surely come, when you will know how fondly and devotedly I compare your deep, though often troubled, struggling earnestness, with this cold, far-glancing, manysided, self-idolising, consummate artist. I am unjust to Walsingham. No man could so well understand and tolerate all kinds of characters, even the most unlike his own, nay, even the poor, foolish, painful, mimicries of himself, without a long and hard self-sacrificing discipline. There is nothing which I find that he so thoroughly hates as the coarse, tawdry finery of the English upper classes, unaccompanied, as it so often is, by any true refinement or sense of the beautiful. But I think, that when this better taste exists, he is inclined to overlook in its favour much of moral evil, and even a good deal of heartless selfishness. When this tendency of his breaks out I shrink away from him. But then again my admiration is recalled to him by his sensibility to every form of power and loveliness, by his insight into the real substance of all the kinds of human life we meet with, and his capacity of divining the history of each, and rounding off its destiny into a clear and expressive whole. Sometimes, for a few moments, I seem borne upwards on his eagle wings, and feel long after as if he had placed me on a mighty mountain-head, whence, in bright sunshine and keen blue air, I can behold the great and living mass of Nature and Mankind. Dare I ask myself whether I could be content to dwell with him upon that summit? It is too late to doubt whether I shall ask the question. Arthur, forgive me! But I am clear as to the answer-No-Ob, No. May God forbid! Rather let me live in the darkest, rudest valley, where I may be strengthened and guided by one true, warm, wise heart; where I should not only understand and mould to imagery all the beings round me, but where they might feel that I loved them, and was struggling onward with them to do whatever good we knew, at whatever sacrifice. Walsingham puzzles me more and more. I cannot be mistaken as to the interest he feels in me, and the pleasure he has in my society. I too enjoy the perpetual flow of animated and graceful thoughts which breaks from him on all occasions, and with refer ence to every little outward object,— a plant, a bird, a shower, a village wedding. Now and then he expresses in a few words a view which seems to throw a wondrous light over whole regions of one's life. As this—a large mind, which cannot tolerate small ones, is smaller than if it could. Or this-when we feel strongly and mysteriously as to the past, we should remember that all which seems strangest in our consciousness may arise, not from the past that it relates to, but from the present that it subsists in. Or this-Rochefoucauld's maxims are a true picture, not of human nature, indeed, but of its selfishness. He works like a painter who paints the profile, and chooses the side of the face in which the eye is blind and deformed, instead of the other which is un. blemished. Yet the picture may be a most accurate copy. Or this-the wider the base of life the higher may we hope to raise the summit. Numberless more of such remarks has he let fall in the three days he has been here, and chiefly when conversing with me. And yet there is nothing pedantic or sententious in his tone. He is easy and playful, though earnest ; and these sayings, and others like them, have only come out as explanations of some casual remark which had interested me, and on which I had wished for more light. Yet this man becomes, on occasion, quite a different being, and one with whom I cannot sympathize at all. Thus, we had yesterday at dinner, and staying till to-day, Mrs an airy, sparkling creature, fond of admiration, very good-natured, and skimming through life like a butterfly. Walsingham seemed much amused by her, and paid her a great deal of attention. I am certain she could not in the least understand him in his more serious moments. But the odd thing was, that, seeing him with her, no one could have suspected him of ever having any serious moments. She was singing, and exclaimed, "What stupid words these are- I cannot sing them! and yet the tune is very pretty: Do give me something better for it?" She held out her ivory tablets to him with a coquettish smile, and said, "Do, I should so like it." He took them from her laughing, and said, "Mind you promise to sing the lines," and in ten minutes he gave her the verses Mrs ran through this poem merrily for several stanzas, and while she sang there was a droll indefinable smile about the corners of her mouth, which I could not make out. But before she had done, she shook her pretty bright head, with all its fair ringlets waving round it, and said, "O! I can never get through all that." She then gave him an arch glance, and ran off from the piano to me, saying, "Dear Miss Lascelles, what bores Sapphos, and Madame de Staels, and all such people must have been. Do let us have some rational talk about fashions, and fiddlesticks, and any thing useful." Walsingham took up a book, and his whole look changed to one that would suit my notion of Plato or Pythagoras, and this evidently quite unconsciously. Mrs could not keep her eyes off him long, and after a quarter of an hour she made some excuse for moving. I saw her pass near him and say something laughingly. But he looked up with a face of such entire thoughtful abstraction, that she started away as if she had seen a skeleton-head. He soon, however, smiled, answered her, and then came away and talked to me about Albert Durer's Prayer-book, which I was looking at. CHAPTER IX. Such were the terms on which Maria and Walsingham stood together, when Mrs Nugent proposed that she and they should ride in the evening, after an early dinner, to a ruined church a few miles away, from which there was said to be a very beautiful prospect. They set out more than an hour before sunset, and designed to return by moonlight. Mr Nugent, who was indolent, and cared nothing for any prospects but those of his own pedigree, rent-roll, and dinner-table, said he had letters to write, and staid at home. Two or three of his guests also remained. But the riding-party set out in high spirits, followed by a single servant, and passed quickly through the green lanes till they began to reach the higher and more broken ground of heathy hills. Here they came to a farm-house, where Mrs Nugent, a notable visitor and adviser of her inferior neighbours, said she must go in to see the farmer's wife, but would soon catch them by a shorter road than that which, for the sake of the view, was to be pursued by them. The others, accordingly, rode on. Maria knew that the good lady's habits of delaying and gossiping would probably detain her longer than she expected. But she could not change her aunt's arrangements, and went forward without objection. "Not far," said Maria, " from the point we are approaching lives the man we have before spoken of, the hermit Collins. I have seen him often, and, strange as he is, I like him very much. There is such thorough honesty about him, as well as so much queer uncouth kindness, that he inte rests me extremely. He is the most marked and original figure I have ever heard of in modern England. Whatever is usual and commonplace among us seems to have influenced him only by contraries, and called out nothing but opposition." "All that," answered Walsingham, " is very foolish, or at least very imperfectly wise. In every age there is good enough, if a man will but put himself into harmony with it, to enable him to produce more good out of it. If he does not, he defrauds his time of what he owes to it; and above all, he keeps his own mind in a perpetual aimless ferment of antipathy. Kicking out behind is not the move forward either for horse or man. way to And then what an absurd dream, to fancy that the good in any man has grown up so independently of all around him as to have nothing outward with which to connect itself. No, no, we are not thrown down out of the sky like meteoric stones, but are formed by the same laws and gradual processes as all about us, and so are adapted to it all, and it to us. But, no doubt, Collins will fight his way through his present angry element to peace and activity. What employment has he now ?" "He minds his bee-hives. And to the few people he ever sees he talks quaintly and vigorously, I sometimes think wildly. But all he says has a strong stamp upon it, and never could pass from hand to hand without no tice. [Dec. of his phrases keep ringing in one's After having heard him, some peter to haunt one with the sound for ears, as if he had sent a goblin trumdays and nights after. But I have always felt that he has more in his mind than ever comes out in the expression, and, so odd as his talk is, I should hardly call it affected or conceited." But, much genuine nature there. is right. There must be a Fire-God like that when last I saw him.' laughing, In half an hour after parting from |