CHAPTER VI.

He was a man to look upon, and turn, and look upon again. MISS BAILLIE.

Two or three days after the conversation which I have recorded in the last chapter, I happened to stroll into the drawing-room of the public house, in the evening, and there, to my astonishment, I beheld Emily Wilson and her father. Her presence surprised but did not agitate me. As I looked at her from the other side of the room, I felt no other emotion than the sight of a perfect stranger would have caused; perhaps even less, because one whom I should see for the first time might excite curiosity and even interest, but her I regarded with complete indifference. The sentiment which I had once cherished towards her, which was a minglement of fancy and feeling, had passed away like a vapour from the valleys,

Which moveth all together, if it move at all.

She, to speak accurately, was never, personally, the object of my love, but another and ideal being, fashioned by visionary conception, standing in her place and bearing her name, but having no greater identity or even correspondence with the real person, than that representative phantasm which our mind conjures up, when we hear the name of some distinguished man, and invests with character and circumstance, and loves and hates by accident, bears to him whose title it usurps. I, in respect of the point whence I regarded the world, and the medium through which I looked, was as an alien and a stranger to my former self. A frame and a system of feeling, created by the imagination may change at the bidding of imagination. However wide it be extended, deeply seated and long established, it will always change when the view changes; and man, who in regard to his inward nature

and self-relation, never varies, may, as to his plans and external sentiments, be transformed for ever in an instant. Such difference had occurred to me; I had come out into the active world, and become a man among men; the visionary eye had turned to a calm scrutinizing look; the แ glory and the dream" had passed into common light. So completely finished and rounded off were those former dreams that I could turn them over in my memory and feel how fully they were past and gone. Of my love there remained naught but a great recollection; and as I gazed upon the being before me, I could recur to my former feelings and their object as to matters, whence to the form I viewed there ran no chain of sympathy. I had left, as I thought, those yearnings with the years which owned them, and henceforth another race was to be run. Alas! I was unaware that the soul knows not to forget, and that feeling which once has flowed, though it may ebb, and its ebb may be for years, yet ceases, as little as the sea.

I paused for a moment to review the relation in which we stood and had stood. Whatever I might be or have been, Emily it was quite manifest had no regard for me; and this conclusion I reached by a knowledge of the ordinary state and course of feeling among the ordinary tenants of the world. She had smiled at our youthful attachment,-perhaps forgotten it altogether: and now I was to her but an unnoticed point in the circle around her. Whatever shadows might lie upon her heart, none could be cast there by the thought of me; whatever lights might sun her vision, none could be brought to image my form. I could not err in a conclusion which was founded on the opinion that a three years' silent absence was on the calendar of a woman's heart, an absence for ever. I felt well assured that my presence would be observed with perhaps greater insensibility by her than hers had been regarded by me.

As I approached her, I saw a person of very striking appearance sitting near her and conversing with her in that low and winning voice which is so irresistible in its influence on woman; which, though the remarks may be ever so impersonal, yet,-like sitting in a low chair at a respectful distance, or any other of the thousand tricks of

an ingenious lover, suggests, where suggestion is everything. She seemed to be listening to him with great interest, and plainly exhibited in her manner that emotion of regard which, when it exists strongly, it is scarcely possible for woman to conceal.

"Ah! Mr. Stanley!" said she, as I saluted her, "I understood that you were here, and I am glad to see you, for the last time I met you, you disappeared so suddenly and so oddly that I had scarcely time to renew my old acquaintance with you. Pray, what became of you that day that you came into our house like a shadow and departed like its shade?"

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The dust' drove me to the sea," said I; " and I cannot but applaud the happy instinct which led me to the place which you were about to visit."

The

She presented the stranger to me as Mr. Tyler. gentleman rose with dignity, and as he came more fully under my notice, I thought that I had scarcely ever seen a more remarkable countenance. There was upon it that stamp of individuality which would have arrested observation under almost any circumstances. His face indi

cated a man of about twenty-eight years, and yet his hair was a good deal tinged with gray. His complexion was clear but something pale; if I may use the expression, singularly clean. His keen but steady gray eye, very slightly closed,-a circumstance rather visible in a wrinkle on the cheek than by any diminution of the orb, -met an observer with iron resolution. His mouth, a little compressed, as with musing, had an air of pleasantness which was on the point of being a faint smile. The whole air of his face, though beaming with intelligence and marks of soul, was wonderfully cold and composed, and gave him the appearance of one constantly on his guard against all excitement. His brow,-a peculiarly broad and noble one,-was constantly lined by a faint and not displeasing frown,-a circumstance which afforded a remarkable contrast to the calmness of his lip and gave his countenance an expression at once pensive and firm. One would have felt a liking for such a man on the shortest acquaintance; but would not, I suspect, have ventured to take a liberty with him even after the longest intimacy. I have been somewhat particular in my de

scription of this person, for I had subsequently occasion to compare the appearance with the reality. His conversation was rich and various; he never introduced the topic of discourse, and never appeared inclined to take the lead and control of the company; but upon every subject that was brought forward, he spoke so and so much as less to display the positive wealth of his mind, than to leave upon you the impression of an intellect vigorous toward every quarter, and of resources limited by no common bounds. There was no effort to please, apparent in his conduct, but rather a tone of reserve, and carelessness of the effect of his conversation; in fact, in the manner of his remarks there seemed to be a want of sympathy with others, though there was none whatever in the matter of them.

There was a fine damask rose lying upon the table, and to interrupt the awkward silence which is apt to occur upon the meeting of entire strangers, Miss Wilson took it up with a trifling observation.

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'My cousin," said she, “brought it to me to-day, and I have rarely seen a finer one. We were talking, Mr. Tyler, of some of the productions of the pencil, but what has art to show in any department comparable to this simple production of nature? After all, that which we can do, is but a soiled image of that which we can find."

"Permit me," said Mr. Tyler, in a fine, educated tone, "to correct your observation as to the fact, and to qualify the inference which you deduce from it. It is to human skill that you owe the chief beauty of the rose; culture has, indeed, added nothing new, but it has so multiplied the leaves, and so enriched the tints, that the improvement looks like a new creation. Man is as useful in ripening nature's beauty, as nature is useful in refreshing man's taste."

"Are you any thing of a botanist?” said I.

"but

"I know the science, generally,” replied Tyler, not minutely-the extent and variety of its objects, but not their technical system and classification. I am, like the poet,

Contented if I may enjoy

The things which others understand:

and while I have observed with pleasure that there is herein matter for a science, I have resolutely ignored all its details. To appreciate fully any one of the fine arts,— and the remark is especially true of what may be called nature's fine arts,-all that is required is a superficial acquaintance with the method of composition, and an information of the difficulties which have been overcome in the construction; any knowledge, farther than that, creates a taste mechanical rather than æsthetical. We look upon a flower, a picture, or a temple, not to discover in what new form the spirit of beauty has been evolved, but to inquire with what number of petals, what mixture of colours, and what principles of proportion the production has been fashioned. As knowledge advances, love retreats. There are no mortal minds capacious enough, at once, to know accurately and to love warmly: none in which intelligence and feeling advance together. In man's mental character a single feature must predominate; the frame of his spirit, must be one, the direction of his tastes, exclusive. And it is in this that lies his inferiority to the highest intelligence-that the march of his intellectual progress is linear, not circular; his capacity for every end is perhaps unlimited, but his destiny is, to choose In the notion which I form of almighty mind, I do not contemplate merely one faculty infinitely advanced, and separately exercised, but all modes, forms and branches of spiritual manifestation co-existently infinite;-a sensibility of feeling to which the highest ardours of the lyre shall be coldness -a stern omnipotence of power which can transform while it gazes-and a comprehensive reach of knowledge which can count the downy features of a rose-leaf, even while it is exploring the fertile machinations of a demon: all harmonising in perfect and equal developement. If man, however, be confined to select between knowledge, and love, whose base note also is religion, there can be little doubt as to the choice, if its guide shall be the happiness and elevation of humanity. Knowledge raises us above the brutes, but love erects us above ourselves. Still botany is a gentle science, and, I doubt not, as lovely as the objects which it contemplates, and the sex which generally affects it."

"It is the only science," said Emily, "with which I