the instrument before which he sat, while I stood beside him, a door-way led into another room, which I knew to be a small cabinet of books, and this opening, was closed not by a door, but a green curtain. On one occasion on which I had been singing with much pleasure to myself, and to the satisfaction of my friend and master, I had ended the song, a new one of the poet before mentioned, of which the air closed in a long pathetic flow of deepest emotion; such, that the poet afterwards compared it to the last bright soft sunset before the commencing deluge. At the instant when my voice sank into silence, I heard a slight rustling near me, and looking round, I saw the curtain drawn aside, and held in one hand by a man whose other hand, as well as his countenance, expressed the highest degree of attention and sympathy. As my eyes caught his, he did not retire, but came forward, and apologized for his intrusion, by saying, that he had been engaged in arranging some verses in the cabinet for our common friend. I found that it was the poet. I afterwards learned from him that he had several times already been the unseen auditor of my singing. His fame was such, and such my own estimation of him, and his manners, and language, were now so winning, that I could not be displeased. And thus began our intimacy. A fairy sky indeed before a black deluge.

"Thus began my knowledge of a man from whom has been derived the strongest interest of my subsequent life. He was he doubtless still isa person whose appearance and manners are admirably in accordance with the nobler gifts of genius and knowledge. He is distinguished by a tranquil and unfailing dignity, graceful beyond all that I have seen in man, and produced, doubtless, allowing for his bodily advantages, in a great degree by his lively and predominant sense of the beautiful and the appropriate, in all things. In him, eloquence is a various and finished art, embodying and harmonizing a most abundant natural faculty; and I should have thought it altogether unrivalled had I not once known a far more fervid, generous, and lofty spirit, pouring itself forth in somewhat ruder accents. But he also possesses a pliancy and panoramic largeness of mind, pe

culiarly his own, so that he perpetually dazzles and attracts by his swift and direct comprehension of all shapes and sides of human character, which shows itself as well in the common intercourse of life, as in the poetic creations to which he devotes his serious efforts. Being such as he is, you cannot wonder that in the dull and shapeless mass of ordinary society this man blazed like a fiery gem.

"At the time when I became familiar with him, I was inclined to take a sad but resigned view of all things, fancying that as to our ultimate destination, we can know nothing; all the distance round being but cloud and darkness, and nothing remaining for us but to light and adorn as much as possible, the narrow circle in which, for the moment, we are moving. In him I did not meet with any opposi tion to my own views. But I found that gradually, while I learned to know him better, my daily and immediate sphere seemed to grow wider and more beautiful. The dark and solid horizon melted into clear air. He covered the soil with fairer herbage and flowers, and shaded it with enchanted groves, and peopled it with gayer and more stately figures. From all the real incidents and persons we met with, he drew out new meanings, and wrought them together into rounded and dramatic groups. In his hands every material object seemed to become plastic, and yielded to his shaping touch, while he expanded and harmonized it into an intelligible representative of some grand idea or delicate sentiment. Every one also around us grew happier and less barren under the spell of his wise and creative sympathy. Thus I found the two processes going on together; the revival of my own spirit, and that of the whole world I lived in. My feelings in this new state of being were not, indeed, those of my first early and devoted love, nearest of all earthly affections to religion-unhesitating, fond, ecstatic, with a ceaseless, thrilling, sense of new-found life, and with an awful apprehension of a blessed mystery, encompassing both me and hin I loved. I then seemed the companion of the one high kindred spirit in a vast delusive temple, blazing with incense, and deriving its choicest fragrance from our bosoms. After this, the first wondrous enchantment of the youth

zon.

I

ful heart was rudely broken, and I found myself alone, and mourning in a dead wilderness, with the dark shadow of him I once delighted in, mocking at me, as it fled on the far horiThen in fear, and shame, and eager passion, I thought that I had found realized in you all I once dreamt of, wanting only my own irrecoverable rapture, and fancied that the one great woe of nature and destiny was the folly which led me to lavish my life upon another, instead of treasuring it for you. There was a fearful mad joy in this kindling of a love which had believed extinct for ever. In gain. ing your affection, I seized this good even on the brink of misery, and while I knew that a still blacker misery than the first, would needs, one day, perhaps the very morrow, arise from it. Lastly, came my relation to my new friend, which rather tended to brighten and enlarge the common and the cheap, and to enable me to make the best of the inevitable, and to smooth and embellish my road over the earth, though it gave me no wings for mounting into air. At first, I had dwelt in a heavenly paradise with one whom I now will not name. Then in a ro mantic home with you, amid a lonely and sublime land. But now with him in a light and fanciful pavilion, pitched for ease and refreshment in a spot retired, but not far from ordinary human life, and yielding a fair prospect of its fields, and streams, and towns.

"Thus I thought of him when first we became intimate with each other. But gradually I better understood and was more strongly interested in the inexhaustible resources of his talents, and his power, not of assuming as a disguise, but of shaping himself into every diversity of brilliant and striking life. I learned, also, to love him more, and to value more highly his apparent admiration. So all this comparison, which I had often drawn for myself, changed its outline, and still more its colouring. I began to ask myself whether this calmer but more complete mutual intelligence, this clear and friendly view over the world around us, this freedom from exaggerating illusion, and this enjoyment of the whole genius of a man than whom none, probably, is more entirely and profusely cultivated, was not well worth all that I had ever known of headlong passion, of flaming

VOL, XLV. NO, CCLXXIX,

imagination, and dizzy self-abandonment. I often shrank from saying, yes, to the question. But, at least, I thought, what I now possess is the best substitute for earlier delight which time and calamity have left me.

"I saw this man in the midst of London society, where he was necessarily the central figure of many circles. Those who did not at all appreciate his powers, and to whom his poems appeared tame, trifling, and obscure, yet felt the necessity of his presence, and were fascinated by the clear and graceful word which solved whatever riddle came to hand, and was always spoken at the right time. More than others I enjoyed his superiority, for I understood him better than all but a few, and received more attention from him than any. To this hour I cannot remember, without some surprise, how much I learned from him even in the course of a few months. He taught me to see in art a world akin to, but distinct from, the natural one, and representing all its rude vast wilderness of facts in sunny and transparent imagery. The Beautiful became for me the highest ob ject of existence-to see it and reproduce it the noblest aim of human effort. Not at all that I or my friend supposed all things to exist only for the purpose of being purified and recombined into beautiful symbols. But he taught me that there is an element of beauty in whatever is most evil, and that the highest of our many faculties and tasks is that of discovering this, and employing it in such shapes as shall make it manifest to the apprehension of men. But I will not now review the many sides on which this idea was presented to me, and how much in history and literature was called up by the necromancy of his intellect to strengthen me in these opinions and sympathies. It is useless to linger over the tale. I found, in short, that the more I grew to know and admire him, the more divided I insensibly became from all my other acquaintances and friends. Some, of course, were jealous of my influence over him-some affected a moral disapprobation, which some, doubtless, felt. The tide of opinion had set against me, and many were determined to go with it wherever it might lead or mislead them. He continued to woo me as a minstrel-lover, and to

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instruct me as a sage teacher, but also to laugh at many scruples of those around us, and say that it was idle to listen to moral saws and maxims, very right for those who need them, but inapplicable to persons more highly cultivated than the crowd. Our life,' he would say, may be a complete, passionate, graceful, earnest poem, in spite of those who censure without appreciating us.' I found myself, also, less bound by the opinion of society, for while more strongly drawn to him I was more and more separated from every one else. In fact, he had formed a border of delicate plants around me, and led me to tend them carefully, unheeding, till too late, when I found myself imprisoned in a hedge of thorns and poison flowers. Still I fancied my self contented so long as he was with me. He, too, appeared to feel as I, nay, became more and more devoted. Some of the loveliest poems with which he bewitched the world, were suggested by his passion for me; nay, a few of his songs were but versifications of passages in my letters to him. In a word-for I have loitered too weakly already-I became wholly his, but not before I fancied that he was no less entirely my own. It is idle in me to talk of shame, guilt, remorse. I talked of these once as others do, and as people hear them talked of in sermons. Now I know them, and oh, how sharply has the knowledge been forced upon me!

"In the mean-time he never abandoned his position in that society from which, for his sake, I had excluded myself. He mingled in it as much as before, and was no less wondered at and observed, while he laboured in private at my side in the creation of works which gained daily more approbation, and that of a more valuable kind. But I was not happy. My sorrow, however, was only one ingredient in a potion which contained much of passion, enthusiasm, romance, in a word, of deep, delightful, and, strange as it may seem, I will add, of unselfish love. Such was my state when, on the morrow of a day, most of which he had passed with me, I received a note from him, saying that he found it absolutely necessary, in order to complete a work he had undertaken on the different periods of art, that he should again visit Italy. He was about to set out in two or three days. You know,' he said, 'how

much I dislike all painful scenes tha excite and exhaust the feelings, bu leave behind no profitable result. I will be happier for us both that we should not meet again. I trust that, in my absence, you may form some tie which will at least replace all that you must lose in me. Agreeable and instructive occupations you cannot want. In particular, I would recommend to you the art of lithographic drawing, in which I think you likely to excel, and which seems capable of much improvement.'

"Such was the farewell of a man for whom I had sacrificed all that a woman can give or lose. I was too completely crushed by the blow to make him any answer. My health gave way along with so much else. He wrote to me two or three times during the year he was in Italy, and affected to believe my answers must have miscarried. They had never been written. It is now two years since his return. I refused to see him on his making the proposal. I am now dying, without a friend near me, and with no consolation but that which I derive from the certainty of my own repentance for the much of evil in my life, and that I now long and groan towards good in every form of it I know, not from the hope of any selfish gain, but for its own excellence, and from the deep conviction that the sense of beauty is but the thin dream of which pure sanctity is the waking life. I have but one request to make to any one on earth, which is, that you will convey the accompanying papers to Walsingham. They are the letters and poems which he addressed to me. I have written inside the cover, only the words, I forgive, as I pray to be forgiven.' You, therefore, need not fear that you will be the messenger of any weak reproaches. If your voice can add aught likely to move his heart, and awaken in him some consciousness of the amazing reality of those feelings which have been to him through life only most refined and elaborate play-things, I pray you to do it. To yourself I would only say

hope in all that is good. Believe in it love it not with the love of passion, but with that of your whole being,-mind, heart, and conscience. Do this, and you will in time find peace, perhaps, where you now least expect it. Think of me as now, in dying, the true sister of your spirit, SELINA."

Accompanying this letter was one from a medical man, unknown to Collins, announcing that the packet of papers had been given him by his patient on her death-bed, with an earnest request that it might be sent immediately after her decease. Her death had been calm and Christian; and she had desired that a stone should be placed upon her grave, bearing only this inscription,-" Here lies a Woman, a Sinner, a Victim, and a Penitent."

When Collins had indulged for an hour the feelings caused by this communication, he walked to the Mount in search of Walsingham. He did not at all change his common grey dress; and he arrived at the house with his staff in his hand, weary, travel-stained, and excited. He might not have easily gained access at the moment to the man he sought, but Maria happened to see him, and, observing from his look and tone that he was in a disturbed mood, and full of serious care, she asked him no question, but opened a door into the library, and said, believe you will find him there.' Through an arch, at the opposite end of the room, he now saw Walsingham, seated in a smaller study, at a table, and with a book before him. The stained glass window threw a crimson glory on his noble face. As Collins approached with a strong and hasty step, the poet rose, and met him with a gentle smile, expressed his pleasure at seeing him, and begged him to sit down. The recluse had the packet of papers in his hand, which he held out, and said

I

"I am sorry the pleasure is not mutual. I am come on a painful errand, which these papers will explain. Perhaps the nature of it will occur to you, when I recall the name of Selina, and tell you that she is now dead."

"Dead!" said Walsingham, with a tone of sincere surprise and grief; and, as he took the packet, he sank back into his seat, and leaned his head upon his hand, with which he hid his eyes. He remained thus for some minutes, when Collins said-" Dead! and by whom slain, you probably can best divine."

Walsingham looked up with grave

wonder and some scorn; and after a pause, replied,"Oh, I see. You mean to accuse me of her death. A fancy, doubtless, founded on her own statements. Poor Selina! She had an infinite depth of love, but as little wisdom as the shallowest of female natures."

"The greater the crime, of practising on her folly."

"So be it. of those whom we have known at all intimately on which error of some kind does not sit, and accuse and revile us as we pass along. We have, however, something better to do than to reply. As well might one turn back to answer the scoffings of the voices which beset the traveller up the mountain in the Arabian Tale."

There are few graves

"Is this, then, all--a wretched filagree comparison, half a jest, and all a falsehood-which you can give as lamentation for her whose heart you broke?"

"My calmness is perhaps more suitable under the eye of death than your mad, boyish anger. But we gain nothing by this inappropriate dispute. If you have discharged your commission I thank you for your pains; if not, pray do so without delay. I would fain be at leisure to recall the pictures of the past, with which these letters, if they be what I suppose, are closely connected."

"The letters are your own. I have not read them, as I had no spurious ambition of writing a romance, and finding matter to garnish it in every forgotten heap of rubbish. I know well with what a pretence of passionate feeling they must be filled, or they could never have obtained any sympa. thy from a heart like hers."

"I daresay some of them are loveletters; but, assuredly, they contain no binding pledges that my life was to be wasted in playing with the tangles of Selina's hair. But, Mr Collins, I know how she once felt towards you, and I can understand and forgive your present emotion. Your judgment of me is, perhaps, from your point of view, very natural; but, if you have fulfilled the purpose of this visit, I again beg of you to leave me to my own reflections.'

"I would gladly do so, if I had any expectation they would prove as pain. ful as they ought. I have, however, little hope of changing a settled iciness of heart, so long accustomed to be played over by the northern lights of fancy, and therewith to be content. Could you only learn what a base and gaudy reptile you seemed at the last to her, you now seem to me,-you would at least shrink from a contempt far sterner than any you can pretend to feel. With all your fame, and selfish lic-begetting genius, I have known many a poor handicraftsman worthier than you to have been loved by her, and whose name I would rather be able now to join with hers on her untimely but most welcome tomb."

Walsingham started up, trembling as he rose, while Collins, before he spoke, turned his back upon him, and strode out of the room.

In a few minutes the poet began to read deliberately through the letters and papers; and he soon embodied the results of his reflection on them in some hasty stanzas. He afterwards recurred to the scene between himself and Collins, and came to the conclusion that it resembled one which might be worth painting between Luther and Leo X. Collins, he thought, would probably be as well pleased with the part of the reformer which I assign him, as I with that of the cultivated and genial man, no true head, perhaps, of Christendom, but a worthy Pope of the Fine Arts. After all, St Peter's is like to stand as long as the Reformation. The verses were these:

1.

"There was a maid who held a lute,
And sat beside a fountain's brim,
And while she sang the woods were mute,
And heard through all their arches dim.

2.

"She sang, O! life, thou weary boon, 'Tis Love that makes thee sad to me,

And thou, O Love! wilt leave me soon, For Grief's cold kiss has poisoned thee.

On that evening Collins returned, weary, sad, and scornful, to his cottage, and sat solitary in the room where he had received Walsingham and Maria. The old servant, who was accustomed to observe his humour,

saw that he was disturbed and melancholy, and kept out of his way. Thus he remained, alone in his old elm-wood arm-chair, with his eyes: fixed upon the floor, while darkness closed around him. The ticking of the ancient clock,