wholesome aspirations once centred on an aim so true and high, that every other earthly pursuit, compared with this, seemed aimless. I could have wept for pity for the lost self, hardly less than for the lost Herzallerliebste.

VIII But vivendum dum vivendum. Divine dawning follows the night of the longest wakefulness: Aurora, who now in place of her natural brightness and comfort, brought the immediate sense of central disquiet, of the vacant yearning, the advent of the days which, in the Preacher's pathetic phrase, have no pleasure in them'. That sad experience has been mine since almost uninterruptedly,early, to wish it late, and late, that it might be early no more; to ask at rising how I should this day confront again and endure the weight of human hours'; to find at evening that the day had passed, sustained by secret unavowed hope for what could have no accomplishment. Yet if I felt this calamity like a man, it was a duty recognized at once, to bear it manfully; to accept the burden. resignedly indeed, but without the selfish hypocrisy of feigned acquiescence, confessing the aim of life lost without compensation, but determined to do the work of life still ; if conquered, yet by aid of what resistance I could gather up, undefeated. One of the very few points on which (my trust was) I might not unjustly rank myself with Désirée, was love of truth, and hence aversion from sentimentalism; that enervation at least I would not add to the sickheartedness of sorrow, or refuse any possible comfort. Ideal aspirations, practical duty, the lessons of nature and of study, these, while so much had been taken, appeared much abiding until years had passed could I detect the latent hope which underlay and animated all? or know that when Hope died, these also, falling into sepulchral darkness, would part with every trace of consola

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tion: books, life, and nature alike vanity, the diversions of pleasure, and the rewards of conscience'? Reserving for later record the larger lessons of sorrow, I shall add here only, in final reference to my own special sphere of life, that I now entered and without interruption pursued a profession of practical, often of immediate and sensible, usefulness; not over-monotonous, or over-varied; and leaving intervals for many distant wanderings, which however were not, like two former journeys already noticed, equilinear with that pilgrimage through the world within the heart which I have beguiled some hours by recording.

IX Désirée's return to London, the central scene of these events, had meanwhile added an active perplexity to the toilsome reconstruction of existence from ruin. When first now I saw the windows of that familiar house ruddy in a winter's twilight, it was as if the ghost of the buried life had appeared with a false glow of former happiness, a smile of transcending mockery. I strove hard to confirm. myself in the conviction that the sentence was irrevocable, Anteros lord of the ascendant. Désirée will look with indifference, I said, on the desolation her coldness has wrought. Was it not wisdom, was it not duty, was it not justice to self, to refrain from seeing her? . . . As I thought thus, or tried to think, I had seen her already. We had parted last with smiles and waving hands; but ah! moment of suppressed sighs, of glances which in that moment exchanged the lesson of life, of thoughts too sad for tears,—when a door opened, and suddenly we were face to face. Passion and Poetry have celebrated often the solemn sorrow of utter farewells; but are there not meetings even more poignantly cruel? When during youth, in street or company, I had chanced on the fair child, often, to borrow the Homeric phrase painting that sudden influx

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of vital dissolution when the death-mist fell upon some warrior, a power stronger than Death had 'loosened my 'knees': it is not beyond truth to say (and I have Dante's authority for transference of the passage to the circumstances of pure human passion), that in such instants of surprize Désirée's countenance seemed as the sun shining in his strength, and, like the recluse of Patmos before the great Dominical apparition, I could have fallen at her feet as dead. Not less profound was the emotion of this other instant; but now, so radically changed was every thought save one, that I wondered to see no sign of some allpervading alteration in the bright eyes and hair: I declare, when Désirée spoke, it astonished me as I heard the 'dear 'dear voice', deepened as we met by sudden surprize, resume its own natural blitheness.

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Alas! one passes through these things, and lives. Her presence asserted its inseparable attraction: again and again the ancient spirit drew my feet thither it terrified me to find that, with the profoundest renunciation of hope, I loved her still no less. Once, of course, an hour came when the written dialogue of Anteros and Eros was repeated with more solemn and tender earnestness; when Désirée, renewing the promise she never declined from for an instant, true sisterly affection, warned me with tears, that not for her sake, but mine, separation would be the best wisdom; when I gave the promise of obedience, and returned next morning to obey, by breaking it, that something in Désirée more powerful and persuasive than Désirée herself. Was this indeed folly? If so, the world's contempt would not have moved me there. He surely has tasted love with half his mind,' who could repay coldness with coldness, scorn with scorn, or hasten to transfer allegiance. Would that be a true affection,

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which, forswearing itself, in Shakspeare's phrase 'bends ' with the remover to remove'? which, while professing to have followed an impulse beyond all spontaneous and irresistible, has yet been given only with a tacit preconvention it shall be returned? Was it in that direction the manly course lay? O no: however resigned to despair, it was truer manliness to be honest to the real self, ahora y 'siempre', 'feal and leal', to love her still for her own dear sake—and indeed, with Luther, I could no otherwise. Nor again, turning to the voices from within, if any counselled surrender, the child's heart beat an answer within the man; some inarticulate oracle rose up to repel such dereliction, to whisper that God himself, it seemed, in full conclave of creation, could not afford me another Désirée.

X This was best, and I sat by her side awhile, wondering often if it was I, and under what strange license, who sat there, or which the unreal thing—the happy past, rich in hope and a thousand gracious memories, or that other (it is past now also), where the room, littered with the toys or dresses of the little ones, careless servants coming and going, and, by fireside or window, the bright familiar faces, accents to their least modulation remembered from childhood, appeared each in its turn phantomatic from the sense that in so much that was dear I had no authentic portion: a sojourner for the hour in Eden: a stranger in the heart of home. Then at such hours the old self would seem to revive these at least, if not pleasure, gave the visionary feeling nearest. Désirée's least words and gestures-all about her her features, and her dress, all were, if possible, endeared further by the knowledge that, as I could no longer in any sense regard them mine, they were hers but the more exclusively. I knew her so well, often I could detect slight differences in her bearing,—a train of con

versation dropped, an over-mirthfulness repressed; a more watchful and eager sympathy in language; signs of affectionate anxiety to save me (but I was not to be saved) from too vivid a sense of fate, of what had 'stepped 'between heart and heart', since the childly intercourse of which this was the continuation. Tears, if tears, as in the unashamed heroic days, were now the natural expression of manly sorrow, I might justly have shed over the strange pathos of these meetings: the irrepressible delight and airiness of heart which, even so circumstanced, I could not avoid sharing, a halo, almost materially sensible, thrown over me from her brightness; the generous forbearance, the frank affection, the unabated confidingness of Désirée; the security of household hearts', the community of interests preserved unbroken; the blithe smiles of irresistible contagion, the pity that seemed almost love. whilst glancing even at these things, it is hardly that I restrain them.

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In lines of that aethereal beauty which, beyond any other of the sons of song, was his inheritance, Shelley has expressed these feelings. Désirée truly gave me what was 'more dear from her than love from another'. Yet with her inherent liveliness, and that ready welcoming of new acquaintances already noticed, which, without impairing her fidelity towards older friends, was not without some injurious reaction upon her judgment, hardly, even after all she knew, I think, did she recognize this unwavering constancy, or do justice to that inability to love her less with which God and Nature and Experience, for my own misfortune, had gifted me. And on my part, meanwhile, I perhaps deceived her by the transient glory of delight with which I was transfigured in her presence: the smiles I smiled at myself, when I had left her, with a double