The pages containing the lines named from T recall to-day, as I open them, the flood and fulness the pleasure almost sensuous in its completenes which, nine years since, the reader mentally blesse great Benefactor. And it was then a further pleasur lost, to feel such gratitude towards a living ma know that Wordsworth had received already from tho the firstfruits of unending gratitude, the one precious result and real essence of that Fame, in ignorance of the world's future, men have agreed Immortality.

XXX If the writer has appeared to wander wid the purpose of his story and Désirée, he desires, w the egotism of further justification, to refer to the stated at the outset of these digressional pages. surely would be a poor love, an unenduring, one 'only for some summer crop' (Plato's graceful word 'the gardens of Adonis', not incorporate in the whole of existence, by which the main intellectual crises were not modified, whence affection was itself uninflu The poet may with right question the birth and nu place of fancy, and head or heart assert equal claims madrigal; but in impulses or powers more deeply we know that such severance is arbitrary; that th and feeling are identified in life,-permanently coe through its changes. Thus passion also has its p and she whom I had loved with unthoughtful rapt delight in boyhood, reverence and holier adorat earlier youth, daily now became more and more the hope of calm, the soul's anchor, the shrine of tha blessedness where self-disturbance could have no p Nor was this contrast alone aroused by indulge thoughts of Désirée. O! it seemed then no vain.

from Tintern lness of joy, leteness, for blessed this pleasure, now g man,-to om thousands

e one truly ame, which,

greed to call

er wide from ires, without

to the reason Dages. That one 'sown

l words) 'in whole frame crises of life uninfluenced. and nursing

claims in his eeply rooted, hat thought y coexistent its phases;

of

1 rapture doration in the central

of that only no portion. dulgence in ain conceit

that I might walk this world to some at least high-aiming
end, when led by this fair soul from boyhood to age, sus-
tained in doubt and battle by the love of one whose
presence
was Courage, and remembrance Peace. The conclusions
of ignorance, the overruling sense of mystery just described,
I cannot say were by any traceable derivation effects of
passion. But, Désirée by my side, I felt always these
difficulties would receive pure practical solution. Give me
but this one, and I thought I should have all things. When
with her now-and she too, as I have feebly indicated,
advanced to a most rare womanly perfection-stray words,
clear wise questions, hints of cheerful serious experience,
revealed constantly her labours for the sick and suffering
and sinful: when not seeing her, I often tracked her 'holy
'footsteps' turned from the paths of innocent pleasure to
the dwellings and amongst the children of the poor; and
thus, even more surely than Laura's, 'turned heavenward'.
For, my University course ended with fair success, I had
now returned to London and a welcome frank and affection-
ate as ever from the golden-haired maiden, who, with all
that 'the Hours rich in blossoms' had brought her, main-
tained the young child's heart unimpaired in freshness,—
secure in the confidence that feared no misconstruction,
and the happiness which did not need to look beyond the
day. And if at times I wished that Désirée did not find
the present so all-sufficing; if I thought I must now speak

-this was put to flight by her own perfect unreserve and
noble heartiness, that by the good sense and healthy courage
on which her blithesome spirits rested. If entering the
house perplexed, determined, or serious, such feelings faded
before the smiles and freedom of an intimacy, too precious
to be lightly perilled, too delighting to admit alien

236263

t

thoughts: by her dear side within that home of chi I regained always the childhood of home.

XXXI Come what may indeed, I too have blessed; for this intimacy was a prerogative precious royal privileges. Time and circumstance combine to it so rare that few men, I have often thought, prize true value the friendship which has arisen in the da 'owned by memory'. Not grace and beauty in their tri not wedded confidence, not even the mutual endearm children are sureties of fondness that quite equal the years, the little things of Long-ago, the thoughts together from the nursery, the remembered feelings date almost before we could speak them. All this in (and all this was mine), for full completion wanted th of the days to come; yet meanwhile each step onwa the world without, made me cling closer to that bl which Time himself who had given, could not replace long familiarity which, I thought with pride, was m individual privilege. I could please myself by m Désirée what gifts I chose; for this familiarity perr it, and she was one of the great race, to whom it is po to give with no apprehension that the balance of frien will be thus disturbed ;-to whom giving and receivin equal, and blessed equally. I could blame her wi fear, for to her pure simplicity the sensitiveness of pr petty personality had no existence: I could prais without reserve, for to that honest nature it seemed no strange that the friends of her youth should regar with affectionate partiality. Silence or speech, trif serious thought, each might be ventured in turn with loyal and unselfanalyzing confidingness: we could without farewell, and meet without special welcome.

e of childhood

o have been

recious beyond bine to render , prize at its

the 'days distheir triumph, endearment of ual the many ughts shared eelings which this in truth

nted the seal onwards in hat blessing replace; the

was my own

by making y permitted

t is possible f friendship eceiving are er without

of pride or praise her ed nothing

regard her

trifles or
with this
ould part
e. And

then - All know that accursed phrase, 'Speech was 'given us to conceal thought'. False though it be, I cannot bear to think how near it is to truth, by operation of conventionality, and littleness, and cowardice. Hence when any human creature, breaking through the veils thus interposed, speaks heart to heart, this is almost irresistibly attractive;--when the speaker unites the intuitive decision 'of a bright and thorough-edged intellect' to the sweet fancies and pathetic ingenuousness of girlhood, free freshness to staid good sense, blithe hearted from royal innocence and health of nature, yet revealing at every breath a soul conversant with high thoughts and constant in holy actions, pleasure passes into thanksgiving;-when she, by whose side I was, added to all was also the hope of life, the heart's central darling from her childhood—I do not dare put into language the blessedness of hours which, in the magnificent phrase of Goethe, might have been envied of 'all the stars in Heaven '.

6

XXXII Knowing the end, I would linger willingly over these bright days, had they supplied words or deeds for recollection to chronicle. But the few adventures real life, a thing I might almost call diametrically opposed to life in romance, affords, except in most rare instances (the groundwork of the Bride of Lammermoor' for example), are short, separate moments of suffering or of action, connected not by poetic unity, but by their simple succession in individual experience, and rarely, how rarely! involving as principal elements in their course the larger modes of passion. Such, therefore, must not be sought here. Nor again, with similar scant exceptions, is the fugitive drama of conversations, so vivid perhaps and delightful, that they seemed almost to eternalize the passing hour, even during the next-far less when years have gone by

recoverable. Like the fair vision in the heavens Wordsworth has somewhere recorded, these moments were rapture as they went: but we felt the while We should 'forget them: they were of the sky, And from our earthly 'memory fade away'. If we tell them, we recreate what we seem to remember. And yet the place, the day, the 'sunshine', all things pertaining to those meetings come back at times: I think if I describe one such occasion more, some part, however small, of the favours of the hour may revive in that revocation; some echo from the far off: some fragrancy from the lost Eden, like that which breathed once from Paradise

- able to drive All sadness but despair.

XXXIII Plus on aime, moins on se fie au sentiment que l'on inspire: Peut-être est il dans la nature d'un amour profond et vrai de redouter un moment solennel, quelque 'désiré qu'il soit, et de ne changer qu'en tremblant 'l'espérance contre le bonheur même'. These words of a highly gifted woman may serve as an introduction, only too charming, to the narrative of an autumn day, spent at the close of the six-years period before alluded to with Désirée once more, as at the beginning of my college life, in a foreign land. This was to be but a brief uninvited visit, and then return it was delightful to think I should give twenty days to travelling, that I might gain two with Inwardly secure of welcome, through a blinding rainstorm I had crossed the sea: had ascended the great romantic river of the North, passed between the Dragon's Rock and the castle arch of the too faithful Toggenburg, dark against the pale azure of a sky that seemed to have wept out its tears, while an orange sunset burned

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