For deeply convinced that to take counsel, in such matters at least, is cowardice, I had hitherto been silent to all :but I had dared the conclusive deed now; I might justly seek the reward of sympathy.

There is no necessity however to record the words and experiences of a visit, only memorable to me because it fell at a season so critical. With many wise sayings, many homely phrases, texts, and childly endearments, and womanly tears, this aged early friend listened to my story delighted. Need I say she approved all her nurseling had done; thought me right in delay, and right in action; gently clapped her hands at learning the letter was despatched; that she held my triumph secure; that in her judgment it was Désirée's happy fortune deserved envy? Thus my last images of light and hope are strangely blended with recollections of that ancient capital; with the furrowed features, and worn hands, and low voice of one who now knows how far the humble confidence of her own faith was surely founded. I may perhaps never visit Cashel again; but never, I suppose, shall forget the last evening there, as the sun melted down into ruby haze behind the purple rock, and great cathedral, the square castle-tower of old troublous times, the battlemented chancel; nor, with these remembrances, the last consolations of this aged saint. Ready now to start for England, and find there the words of final solution, I expressed some natural, I hoped not foolish, fears. She looked up, laying her hands on mine, and laughing blithely as she pointed out the road homewards, 'Go, go', she said, like the saint who consoled the mother of Augustine,' trust in God; it cannot be that He ' will bring the cry of so many years to nothing'.

THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM

BOOK III.

I Meanwhile, round which of the many noble buildings of London, ignorantly underrated from familiarity and from the vastness of our metropolital area, is human interest gathered in largest amount, and with most vital sympathy? Which, to the angels in guard over the world's capital, bears the most grandly pathetic significance? Not the stronghold of Caesar and of Conqueror, although within that spectral whiteness of turreted wall sovereigns have inaugurated their reign with exultation, and closed it in the agonies of discrowned dishonour; though girls and children, statesmen and prelates, have consecrated the spot with innocent blood, or ennobled it by final fortitude ;-not the more than Cathedral Abbey, although within this alone amongst the sanctuaries of Europe, the kings of twenty generations sleep a sleep unbroken by the clarion of foreign foes, or the wild footsteps of intoxicated anarchy ;—not the halls where, as in a colossal and labyrinthine reliquary of human kind, the vestiges of man's creation darken the air with phantasmal forms, and load it with the mysterious voices of annihilated centuries. . . . All these, indeed, in solemnity of interest far transcend any pomp or prodigality of words in which I might endeavour to give their signi

ficance expression. But there is one great building which, defying the employment of any poetical art in its notice, yet by that plain homeliness of name appeals to a deeper mode of poetry: for the General Post Office, to me at least (but I think with justice), has long appeared the most pathetic and representative of our civic monuments, the central heart of that human interest which, spread through a circuit almost illimitable, radiates round London. It is not that the granite flags, moss-stained here and there, or saddened with the yellow withering of interstitial grass, are conscious of the hurrying tread of the vast multitude, a nation indeed dispersed over the whole world, for whom, within the noble atrium, messages of love and desertion, wealth and ruin, death and life, are waiting their season; for during much of the day the great city contains few spots of profounder solitude. But this solitude itself, lying within the shadow of the vast Cathedral, and like the islands of the Nile or Niagara, almost impassive amidst a roar which has hardly paused for centuries, touched mewhen, returning to England after the visit described, a 'spirit in my feet' led me there first from the clamorous railway-more deeply through the double contrast thus presented; the tumult and trepidation of life without, and the heart-audible voices within, oracular of ten thousand destinies. Mine, too, I thought, did that lie here? Like a pilgrim at Delphi or Jerusalem, I could have bowed before the shrine with awe; and as I thought, I looked upwards with the look which is prayer to the

Cross of gold

That shines over city and river,

--and O! thence onwards in fancy to the high crucifix

above the Moselle valley, and Désirée standing beneath, and that last glance of confiding earnest eyes, whose message had seemed more than farewell. Now first I felt what it is to have cast oneself, like a child cradled in the arms of Fate, on the Unchangeable and the Irresistible. My destiny might be lying here, but less than royal prerogative would not unfold it to me before the morning: it might be lying here, and if so, Omnipotence itself, without miracle, could not now reverse it.

II Othello was played that evening at a half-crowded and noisy theatre in the autumnal absence of all friends with whom I might deceive the hours, I went eagerly. This was a foolish resource. 'Faith, half asleep' like Desdemona, to the tawdry Venice of the stage, and the declamation of so many passionate words fit only for whispering, alone in the crowd with thoughts of Désirée, when I heard

If Heaven would make me such another world
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite

I'd not have sold her for it :

-I laughed almost in irony. He, who against his 'soul's 'joy' endured, even for a moment or a metaphor, to set any earthly treasure in the balance, could have loved, I thought, but little. To gain the whole world, and lose one's own soul's Darling, what would it profit? I went in imagination from Cyprus and Venice to Verona, and, in Romeo's answer to Laurence, found a far homelier and higher passion, a something which seemed to speak all the immense yearning, the eager tenderness of such a crisis as mine, in language itself' deep as love':

Come what sorrow can

It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
That one short minute gives me in her sight.
Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then love-devouring Death do what he dare,
It is enough I may but call her mine.

If these words seemed a bright omen for that evening, if I accepted them as my last thought and augury before sleep, this was not an individual weakness. I am not alone in the folly, if folly it is, which finds that my Shakspeare,' as with one who came nearest in glory, every Englishman is privileged to call him,-in many inspired lines has furnished eternal oracles for his countrymen.

III These words ringing through my memory, and hardly daring to wish it day, I slept: and when day came, inwardly certain that I distinguished already the steps of the messenger, bearing from that central station the lines of fate along the most crowded streets of London,-going out into a certain place shadowed with trees and gay with the last autumnal flowers, almost, I may truly say, without hope or fear, I awaited his arrival. For excluding as tormentors, useless now when the decision had already gone forth, these passions-by effort of will I summoned to the 'sessions of sweet silent thought' the image of Désirée alone, and her high and holy nature; all she had been from her dear childhood, all that promise for a hereafter bounded only by eternity.

Da war es gleich als ob der Himmel glänzte ;
Mir schien, als wäre nichts mir, nichts entgangen,
Als hätt' ich alles, was ich je genossen.

-My own and only love: Désirée ! my darling Désirée !
And then, my nurse's words, the trust in God', on