pedantry or the world's sneer at imaginative enthusia Hic gelidi fontes; hic mollia prata, Lycori; summed up the sweet abandonment of a desire which, wit Gallus, I was to learn could be consummated by no labou and conquered by no defeat. Is it a childis husiasm, 1. As a t living macy, I rrender Others on after ut most almost These minally essence ht, and pods of as men purple whisper Virgil excelFor the ng the might e, that Co one me, I ionate with bour, Idish pleasure to record these little things? If so, I am a child : XXII I have dwelt with some minuteness on my first studies, because, whatever growth of mind belongs to the years under narration was in fact the result mainly of these and of the passion of love. For even at the time I was not much influenced by the premature friendships, since faded, of school: thinking of them almost as contrasts to set off and glorify that ever-present image of Désirée and this the more, because the strongly marked, and I might say tumultuous, avowal of boyish affection, was in its nature antagonistic to the sweet silent secrecy of that other. Nor, again, were the general direction and spirit of the study inculcated, in themselves (I think) elevated, or such as impress those on the threshold of youth: the crises of intellectual life came to any, if they came at all, not from superior guidance, not from a scientifically ordered scheme of education, but through their individual thought, through personal and private intercourse (and perhaps better so) with the master-spirits. I recollect indeed always with affection the venerable buildings in the old Cathedral city, and the green places where the children of to-day are playing: but it is chiefly an alien interest—the remembrance of the golden-haired child who seemed to leave her own home daily, and all day long, to haunt the trees, and fields, and dark cloisters, and crowded schoolroom, the quaint nooks and slovenly dens in which boys love to ensconce themselves, and consecrate every commonplace into Heaven. More, far more deeply than any associations derived from school, is she interfused in my school recollections. I believe that in those days (and some will not think it a weakness) I never entered the great boisterous hall or left it, never completed any task requiring exercise of youthful powers 1 (and thus a symbol of the prize of life), never took place in one of the more ambitious games, in cricket-field football, without supplication for blessing on her, and me through her. It is no fine fancy, no figure of wo but with strong and sober reason that, looking back that golden time and the first fires of love, I see her, only with the noble Poet in sunshine and moonlight, fi and billow, in the world without me; but far more and higher issues in the world within; Darling first and la in hopes and in regrets, in sport and study, in the strugg of earth and the aspirations higherward. The dear pare might guide by love and by example, friends counsel, a masters instruct :- -but Désirée was my education. XXIII Meanwhile, lest any one should judge the t invidiously by the fruits, and do her image wrong by co parison with her young lover's, he hastens to add, a thi already perhaps evident, that Désirée's direct example he and could hold, but little place in this powerful influend that the dear child was herself absolutely unconscious of t force and the fascination; and that her immanence in secret soul furnished not a law for conscience, so much a central point to which all consciousness referred itself an ideal height, the ascent of which it was his aim in life compass. Ideal I have called it, but it was not the le real to me; nay, the reality of realities. This hope, of cours animated to labour and consoled defeat; by it, in these a the following years at college, I so far conquered a fooli disposition to fancy and reverie, as (under great extern advantages) to become a fair scholar, and achieve here a there some little useful success :- success achieved alwa in her name, for her only; and O! I repent of the wor how deeply useless, a mere child's victory, when at last s refused acceptance. If the Goddess spurned the crow } took my -field or and on f words, back to her, not ht, field - and to nd last, ruggles parents sel, and he tree y com thing e held, uence; of the in his ach as Selflife to e less ourse, se and polish cernal e and word, t she own, laid on bending knees before her feet in Acropolis by some Yet whilst confessing for Truth's sake, and without the only: I remember I blushed to think myself less favoured XXIV It is perhaps hard to say, whether youthful ani- H with it by natural process that enheartened energy whic have ascribed to the influence of Désirée. But a m glorious gain was it, and hers far more certainly, that, operating with holy home guidance, this love carried unharmed through the ambush of young days', and facilities for delightful sin. Often when friends, then afterwards, discussing, treated as a natural weakness physical necessity (for this, to speak truth, which here least is without what moralists imagine her insepara beauty, is men's almost uniform and genuine decisio the κρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δώρα καὶ εὐνή, -did the faintest half remembrance of Désirée chase ar ment or confession from my mind; not refuted, perhaps, effaced practically by that angel form of young imaginat who seemed to purify not her own sex alone, but mine w it. How should others feel the force of this? God had given them Désirée, I had no need then, as I have desire now, to enter on such discussion. Often, how oft when the temptation came with promises of pleasure youth so exquisite (let me once more speak truth, it is be and truth this time less contestable), with facilities justifying, that to refuse appeared not only an immense a painful effort, but as not a few, I am aware, with smiles judge it this moment, whilst they read, an unmanly foolis ness, remembrance of her again silenced every reasoni and impulse with a sensation stronger still: a joy profoundly passionate that it passed into 'pure orga 'pleasure'; a bodily translation, it almost seemed, into kingdom more heavenly than heaven. The dark street v a porch opening on midsummer sunlight: I answered t soft smiles of alluring lasses with smiles I could not |