ty, joyous
friends of
piness to
pleasure,
ast. This
seemed,
d heaven.

! let me
How

f the toys ch-chain I saw it we had

success use, not

worth commemoration) one relic of nearer personality : the name written by the hand. Lately I lighted on the torn fragment, in one of those reliquaries of the past that gather round us as the faith and fire of youth grow feeble; the dreadful drawer which we think we shall never open again by choice, and under some sad impulse open at last without necessity. The paper, gazed at once with such fond intensity that her countenance had appeared often to look out on me from the letters, was covered also with many prayers for Désirée, remembrances dated at each famous city on journeys through France and Italy. I looked: I read these defeated supplications: but I could not recall her face now; but I could pray no longer.

It was not so in those ages of faith. In the expectant silence of the central cricket-field, in the hubbub of the classroom (to venture on one picture more), I saw a village church near the sea, and Darling and I were together in the little Gothic crypt, and wandering over the roof, or touching hands as I aided her blithe ascent to the highest tower and how I drove her home through narrow lane and common-place street, and we talked of friends, and books, and sky, and scenery, and everything together, and I could so little doubt of love for love, childhood's blessed faith, that I never inquired whether her eyes answered mine with an equal animation. 'How often, and what words she 'spoke!' the breezes should have borne them, or fancy fools me, within the golden halls of heaven. . . . These thoughts were my waking dream amongst young companions as I looked at their happy faces, an eternity of their joys, it seemed, was far outweighed by one instant of my happiness.

X The events of those days were trivial, little things truly, although the little things of love it is not the facts,

as I have said, but the glory of their investing sens I wish to narrate. Yet one there was so special, lightful from the accident of its occurrence, that I pass by the bitter pleasure of recording it. I had ret (for two or three years have now passed) from a c success, to be welcomed at school with the honou apart on such conjunctures for schoolboys. There w feast at the Master's house, the congratulation c seniors, the welcome from those already successfu little intoxication of pleasure; a sense of first on real life. And, this concluded, without I foun blither and more demonstrative greeting from my rades, shouts, and brave good wishes, and warm clasped in mine, and the rude and animated proce which carried me in triumph round the playing But on that afternoon, by a coincidence heartfelt striking the more, because sight of her, as we p childhood but had not reached independent years (wit further impediment of school-residence), had now rarer, a far other triumph awaited me. That wa beyond beyond', to take Imogen's phrase, an hour Désirée. Who would pretend to recall the words sp and fifteen years intervening? But she had come to me joy of my success; it was enough: I fell down in s and worshipped the dear child whose lightsome gle 'sorrise parolette' of congratulation were more anim than contest, more satisfying than victory.

XI In those years she was not only, as one sai licitously of his love, plus femme que les au Désirée was all womanhood to me. When with of I laughed to myself in triumph to think by what measurable space any and every other was dista from her. I might have met the ladies of Arthur's

sensations

ecial, so de-
hat I cannot
ad returned
ma college

honours set
ere was the

ion of the

ccessful; a first entry found the my comarm hands procession ying field. rtfelt and we passed (with the ow grown t was the hour with

As spoken, me to give in spirit, glee and animating

said feautres': ch others,

what imlistanced r's court,

Helen and Beatrice, Perdita and Una, and the interest to me would have been only their privilege of sharing her sex, and reflecting so much of her excellences as allowed me to recognize how far she exceeded them. That antagonism I have noticed between Absence and Presence, the with her and the without her, extended its subtle contrast through every moment of the day; through all the particulars of life. [Désirée, and Not Désirée, were truly

-not

more to me than the Not I' and the 'I' to the Idealist
Philosopher. To listen for the arrival of the noble child,
to think myself, as it were, into her thoughts, to call
on Heaven to sever the too strictly inseparable bond
between Flesh and Spirit and take me to the desired
presence, to put on and cast myself upon the wings
'of thought' thither with such intensity of longing, that
my own soul must, I fancied, have been with her, as
we read of the second sight, in actual vision:-
for days, but years, these were my follies perhaps, but
follies beyond the world's choicest wisdom. Often I gave
her books, not so much for the gift's sake, as that I
might give myself beforehand the physical pleasure of
writing Désirée's name on the title-page. Treasures of
art or wonders of science appeared now unlovely sources of
bare instruction, not of enjoyment: the light that never
'was on sea or land' often extinguished the splendour
of lake and mountain. Even on distant journeys, whilst
delighting in the spectacle, I found a secret irony of
further delight in the simple remembrance of her dearness.
To see the glory and the gloom of Florence, the pomp
and pathos of Rome, Alps and Apennines, Aegaean and
Adriatic, these men counted amongst the golden hours, the
choice circumstances of life : -but God had blessed me
with loftier privileges in an English nursery.

XII Thus the period of my school-life passed a amidst the fitful earnestness of boyish study, wit hours of laborious despair and trances of the first de in Beauty and Greatness: amidst the emulous anim of boyish games, the weeks of happiness by seasi river, the wild pulsation and tumult of coming lif laughter of friends, the peace of home, the reveri passion. Meanwhile, to match the enlargement of the inward service' of the mind had in some degree g wider, and that childly love, a trifle and unworthy r even in memory, if evanescent with childhood, had p also from a simple, unreflecting, all-satisfying Delight some consciousness of hope and fear, something of ma aim, if not to definite plan, or spoken words, or such fessions as were whispered across the balcony of Ve I had been a child

that thought there was no more behind But such a day to-morrow as to-day, And to be boy eternal.

But now the relations of individual desire to the cir stances of life; the relations of my individual lif kindred, friends, neighbours, the world without; the la relations, lastly, of our own age to the many centuries ceding, and, even more imaginatively impressive, ou hidden and unrealized partnership in futurity,-all began dimly to unfold themselves. And as in lessons something is learned from actual life, but r during the limited experiences of boyhood, from books the thoughts they suggest, a few words on the writ which most affected my mind will be excused, let anticipate, by the friend or two for whom I write, and unknown friends by sympathy for whom I hope I writing. At least I ask their pardon if, once or twi

indulge the egotism of tracing the successive gradations of
delight or instruction through which the master-spirits of
the world led me; if I turn from the image of Désirée
to the inward efforts to make myself more worthy her; if
(and by quotation also I shall take the license)

Intesso fregi al ver, s' adorno in parte

D'altri diletti che de' tuoi, le carte.

XIII Without reference to the journal, written when
each day was golden and appeared to deserve an imme-
diate commemoration, I could not retraverse the exact steps
of this progress.
But the oldest leaves, like the Annals of
the Pontifex of Rome in brevity and want of colour, give
only the titles of the books read; I must supply from
memory what comparative value and pleasure I gained in
the reading. Dante and Shakspeare are first and most re-
current in that chronicle. Then during the earlier holidays,
I find efforts to master Sophocles and Juvenal; efforts
mainly of freewill, and hence likelier to teach appreciation
of these books than the fated taskwork of school, in which,
as other boys, I could not at first separate the pleasure of
learning from the sensation that I was compelled to learn.
But the ponderous sentences and emphatic one-sidedness of
the Satirist affected me then far more than the large wisdom
of the Poet, his crystal tranquillity, his modest grace and
refined passion. He was too remote from our thoughts
and ways the love of his heroic world, not mine; too
sensual at once, and too little earthly. Sympathizing
rather after my own measure with Dante, I could not
worship that beauty in Antigone* which had touched me
to the life in Beatrice, the golden-haired Christian child
who had walked the actual streets of Florence, while the
passers-by cried Miracle', and her young lover fainted

:

Sophocles

C

Beatrice