to shrink from the conflict of life or fail before unmanly sorrow, that I were free of these solitudes-that I might live still in society of that one Power which cannot 'betray 'the heart that loves her'—that I might breathe henceforward this luminous and aethereal air, this 'crystal silence', pure of the thick stormy fermentation which frets the atmosphere of man, stirred always by the uproar of action, the shouts of pretentious pleasure, the murmurs of hatred, the ceaseless sighs of the oppressed and the afflicted! Here Nature might bless me also, as she blessed her devoted Wordsworth, with lofty thoughts, with impressions of quietness and beauty; here, if from a Fate beyond even her control, unable to lead me 'from joy to 'joy', she might be privileged at least to satisfy the 'longing for confirmed tranquillity'. . . . A dark point appeared whilst I thought thus, far within the valley below; in a moment it was an eagle; He swept above my head, questing for booty; but at the sight of man, curved away into the invisible chambers of the highest heaven with a loud and ominous cry. The mountain echoes took up the hard iron yelp with seven separate repetitions. Then 'all 'things returned into absolute calm, as if sound itself had 'ceased to be'; as if the world had passed into miraculous and universal silence. I felt ashamed when the noise of my own footsteps, carrying me back towards the storm and struggle of life, broke in upon a repose so profound and so pathetic.

THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM.

BOOK IV.

I So I returned to the great city, anxious indeed to avoid any tidings of Désirée, yet ever and again compelled to a sad smile of self-derision, as I found myself endeavouring to gain opportunities of at least hearing her name spoken. But in that endeavour, by mere chance, by the vast number of separate currents of intelligence in London, by the half-conscious forbearance of friends, (I know not which was the cause), I was long unsuccessful. And presently he who imagined that Fate, during the seven years, (for over so long a period has the narrative borne me), had tried him with her worst wormwood, learned now that fresh forms of pain, spectres of more distracting terror, severer tests of endurance, awaited him in this life-long descent through the circles of sadness. Fearful as are, in so many ways, the powers of that mighty engine, I know no trial more terror-striking than this result of vital sorrow, (already noticed) that the balance of the mind appears to fluctuate beneath its continued agency. I do not speak here of the fever and distraction attendant on a first sense of catastrophe ; - such effects are in their own nature transient; - but there is a certain crisis in which, whilst the sad sobriety of reason remains unim

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paired, passion, prolonged against circumstance, and at war with Fate, almost passes into disease, and changeful Nature revenges herself on Fidelity. As colours grow confused to an overstrained eye, so by constancy of desire, too long and too longing, we lose the moral discernment between fact and fancy;—until things the most sadly certain become incredible to an esperance so obstinately strong' that it has become part of the discerning faculty itself, inwoven into the texture of our reason. That I should, for so I supposed it must be, see Désirée no more: that those accents, the familiar music of life from childhood, would never be heard by me again: that the so long desired 'hand' had clasped another's:- whilst believing, I could scarcely comprehend it. As with Death and Hell, I might use the words; but the shock with which they closed in upon the mind seemed to deaden it to the reception of their terrible significance. I refused the society of friends at first; but it was to discover that solitude was thronged with importunate phantoms and the face I should never see again. To shun her sight, and perpetually seek it: to think only of her, yet not bear to think of her: to dread the wakefulness of the night, because haunted by the image of Désirée, the distraction of the day, because this effaced it by fruitless and unconsoling activity: to find that whilst retaining unimpaired the intellectual capacity to enter into imaginative thought and science, philosophy brought no diversion, and Wordsworth no relief,a discovery which seemed to destroy the last possibility of bearing the weight of the mortal hours:- - such were amongst the paradoxes of pain, the choice favours and lessons of adversity.

But re

II These experiences were from within. turning gradually to the common ways of life, from the routine of business, from the routine of pleasure, from

intercourse with strangers and with friends, new perplexities arose in armed hostility around me. During the years previously narrated, a secret joy in Désirée's presence, a secret confidence in final mercy, had, I now became aware, sustained me a something further from happiness than from hope. God himself, I thought, could not now restore even that partial blessing, or give me hope or trust again. But having accepted, (whether for the best, indeed, I know not), the part of resolution, of resistance against the enervation of grief, of healthy labour, and with it, social life, at once I fell beneath an accompanying duty of deception,-no more euphonious name would be true, which I may justly hold one of the heaviest amongst the many unrecompensed evils of sorrow. Little, very little can the moralizing advisers, who in circumstances such as these lend with a smile the counsels of practical activity, measure the results of obedience ;the tyrannous chain of custom, which follows at once the return to common life, when the Spirit, walking meanwhile alone, like that lost one of the parable, through the leafless desert of the mind', is compelled to affect unreal interest, to act an impossible and hypocritical cheerfulness, to play a false nature. There is no escape from this: that 'common gloss of theologians' is idle: we cannot be in the world, and not of the world. Thus I was now constrained to silence on the one thought perpetually recurring; to many words, when the heart had no desire but for silence. Not the world only, but friends, the dearest and of the most sympathetic intention, ignorant by a more merciful Fate what the wide devastation of such calamity may be, were imperative in these requirements. Nothing else will satisfy in fact that lightheartedness, which under the current epithets rational, religious, or healthy, is the prevailing tone of an age, generally speaking deficient in manly grasp,

and eager to suppress the sternness of truth by gracious sophistry. It is a bitter truth, whatever its professions, the world scorns defeat and sorrow. And whilst in the world we must obey. To take a tone different from its dictates would be the merest folly. Thus how often I entered some house prepared to wear the colours of gaiety, when the very lights and music reproached me; when, in the language of Caesar's soldiery going out to death, I could have greeted any friend with the moriturus te salutat! Bitter was it to set the memory to jests, and arrange the lips for laughter; bitter to sit amongst the smilers, and raise the smile in turn; to pretend to plan the future; to say "Yes! that will be, of course, when I marry', or to acquiesce in the parting intercongratulation, this has 'been a happy evening'. But bitterer yet was it to remember during the solitude of the night, that perhaps I had acted my part well, that I had lied with success against feelings too true for utterance, that, becoming what I seemed, for a few moments I had been 'blind to my soul's most grievous loss', had fallen beneath the fallacies of hope, had exposed myself to the irony of the revenging Furies. . . . . Then, when similar circumstances were repeated, I had too often to regret an indulgence in jesting without shame, and sarcasm without mercy-and (although the last word was assuredly inapplicable) the remark of a great and honoured writer reproached me for the vanity of these attempts to re-enter life; for the desperate levity and bitterness of conversation into which I had lapsed; for the false impression conveyed 'to companions, who were unable to conceive the strength ' of those emotions which are concealed by the jests of the 'wretched, and by the follies of the wise'.

III Now, further, although moved perhaps by other reasons, I might partially agree with the gloomy teacher