เ forth for one look more on the beauties of Troezenian landscape and then borne back to death, I too, beneath a rock whence holy waters ran from their glistening foun'tain', beneath the slowly gathering paleness of crystalline sky, and birds that 'swam through the liquid summer', all things full of life and loveliness,-found myself torn from the new last hope, cast out from the consolations of Nature, and mastered by an unseen phantom, that' some'thing dearer than life, hid from sight in clouds by em'bracing darkness'. Thus an ancient scene was now reenacted but every successive half-hour forced on me some new aspect of this revolution. When, returning towards the house, the village postman met us, and the girls ran quickly forward, the Archangel of the Annunciation himself, I thought, could not now place within his hands a letter I should care to take from them. Everything in that house spoke of days of happiness past, and days to come expected with wise confidence: but what hope had I now for years and years and years? I was never to have again for an hour what they had for all their lives!.. Yet I must drive the one thought from me, I felt, by almost physical effort; I threw myself into the tumult of household gaiety with mad eagerness; until the long day waned, until I was able to relinquish the foolish effort, and be once more in the unrestraint of solitude with what I knew now must be, in every sense, the passion of life. I learned afterwards, that those dear friends remarked no change in my bearing or countenance; they believed me happy. Alas! Happy those, who do not survive such hours. XIX To that evening I must look back as one of the rare crises of existence. In narrating I shall methodize, perhaps, the disordered and tumultuous array of thought; but I may truly say that within the compass of a few hours I made a long advance towards the end,—that I devoured years of life. The sun, when I left my friend's house, must have fallen, in Milton's majestic reckoning, ‘be'neath Azores': it was the darkest interval of the summer's night, the pause between the setting and the rising of Hesperus, during which the faint after-line of sunlight (on any perfect sea-horizon almost continuous at such seasons with the dawning), was here hidden by the mountain barrier of the valley; whilst the stars came forth few and feebly, seeming to rest in some divine languor upon the loftiest summits, or as if they could foresee the moon's ascending chariot from the vantage stations and battlements of heaven. The path I chose had been reserved for another day's expedition, as conducting to the central scenery, the grandest gorge of the district. But in this weak light I could perceive only that vast mountain masses stood round me like giants. No definite way was traceable, and as a guide to my steps I took the torrent, and tracked it upwards by the sound through the valley. Soon the last of a few scattered cottages was behind. I felt a sense of freedom in the consciousness of solitude, as if thought and desire could at length follow their bent, and take an illimitable expansion; as if now, once more it might be, and for an everlasting farewell, I could stand face to face with the lost love. Wild scents, the thyme crushed under foot, the larch on the vale-side, exhaled always more freely during the darkness, spread themselves, as an essence in pure spirit, through the fresh dews and vaporous air :- they recalled the words of a great poet, comparing his own thoughts, and justly, with these perfumes of nature. Go forth,' he said, wandering in his youth through the enchanted Hartz Forest, Go forth, and beyond the mountains seek for my : 'well beloved. She is arest already, and sleeping at her 'feet angels kneel, and when she smiles it is a prayer 'which they take up and murmur. In her bosom lies heaven with all its happiness, and when she breathes, far 'off my heart trembles. The sun is couchant behind her 'eyelids; when they open it will be day':-day for another! ... who I had not cared to ask. Another! Even the sick sadness of the months preceding, the moment of first rejection, appeared felicity itself: times when I was nearer Désirée. I, who had then mentally accused her of coldness, could think of her now only as utter dearness. I seemed to see her sunny bright as in days long past; I cried for her with the first fire of love, con qual sete, con che ostinata fede, con che lagrime! her so long, and to this ending? the years of faith and hope? Had I then honoured Was this the answer to Ah! se non è chi con pietà m' ascolte, I might look up to the great hills around, but no help thence; above them, and God had retreated into the infinite. Why this ineffable pain added? To what purpose torture laid on torture? How have I sinned, I cried aloud, that I should thus be punished? I stood still in silence for an answer; I looked at one dark summit, and commanded it in my heart to move: there might be pity in nature; I would take it for a sign. . . . And then, in the solitude which had seemed absolute, I heard a sound like the last pulsations of some ebbing life, the measured beats of a mill-wheel, interrupted often by water-gushes, on the torrent side. I started to see red light glowing through the windows of a rude cottage, and heard within careless home-happy voices, and one that sang words I could not follow. XX This human presence so near checked the madness of complaint, the tears which in their anguish appeared almost tears of blood, the foolish faith that looked for miracles. Without further thought-for the way was steep and difficult-I walked quickly on, whilst glen narrowed to ghyll by many wild gradations, until the torrent broke down at last from a bare mountain side which barred further progress. Not long after midnight a luminous haze, projected on the white cloud that edged one of the higher summits, and arching into prismatic halos, announced the rising moon. Presently she cleared the sky around her: Bientôt elle répandit ce grand ' sécret de mélancolie, qu'elle aime à raconter aux vieux 'chênes et aux rivages antiques des mers'. Now the whole circle of that strange landscape was defined. Down the valley I saw, in a distance not before visible, angry summits specked with snow; nearer, in an opening gorge, vast upward-pointing masses, rushing precipitately below into heaped and shivered desolation; ruins, they might have been, of Titanic palaces and the towers raised to scale heaven. A serrated ridge, half curve, half keenness, led up hence to the extreme cliff which bounded this Valchiusa, a wall of exquisite grey, mapped out by long runlets glistening in their slow diffusion over the precipice 'naked as a tower'; whilst one great prism of sheer rock shot up high over all, glaring under the moonbeams as if cast in untarnished and celestial silver. When I turned towards the moon, the powdery flood of light, pouring over an abyss of shadow cast from the jagged line of southern crags, fell heavily on my face: it seemed to penetrate me with emanations borne from some world beyond the world, with influences of fairy fantasy, and feelings of vague voluptuousness. Not in vain did the wise of ages, unsophisticated by our complex and distracting civilization, hold the belief that by some weird inexplicable charm Nature is dominant over man; that by mysterious links the universe maintains its unity. That imaginative Pantheism which is the reverential worship of this Power, underlies the civilization of Christendom; when it breaks forth, it chooses no mean votaries, conscious or unconscious, Goethe, Shelley, or Wordsworth, for its reassertion. And it is in the heart of the hills that this spiritual gravitation. grasps us most forcibly. . . . But better not attempt to paint in words that visionary gleam; to frame a description of what is rather hinted to the soul than amenable to the senses; to teach the lessons of solitude in the language of cities. XXI Whatever it be, there is however a presence 'not to be put by' amongst the mountains. The hours appeared at once calmer, yet fuller in thought than their wont as if my life were advancing with the unretrogressive earnestness of the starry courses; as if I breathed in these regions by no mortal measurement'. As Wordsworth has somewhere expressed it, I felt separated from my own self: isolated from identity: I could review the past as if belonging to another. เ Then, looking back over the many years, I endeavoured to ask the whence and whither of this great calamity. It would be relief, it seemed, to detect some cause, within or or without. -some sufficient reason. But here I was altogether baffled. Deep as were the obligations I owed to the lofty passion of Lucretian logic, his answer could not be satisfying; I could not join him in ascribing to any fortuitous aggregation of atoms the spiritual drama of |