e fact that
our people in this comedy move themselves,--are moved from their own
impulsion,--and that no arbitrary hand has posted them to bring about any
event and heap the catastrophe. In vain I tell him that he is meantime
making tatters of the puppets' golden robe illusion: that he is sucking
the blood of their warm humanity out of them. He promises that when
Emilia is in Italy he will retire altogether; for there is a field of
action, of battles and conspiracies, nerve and muscle, where life fights
for plain issues, and he can but sum results. Let us, he entreats, be
true to time and place. In our fat England, the gardener Time is playing
all sorts of delicate freaks in the lines and traceries of the flower of
life, and shall we not note them? If we are to understand our species,
and mark the progress of civilization at all, we must. Thus the
Philosopher. Our partner is our master, and I submit, hopefully looking
for release with my Emilia, in the day when Italy reddens the sky with
the banners of a land revived.

I hear Wilfrid singing out that he is aloft, burning to rush ahead, while
his beast capers in one spot, abominably ludicrous. This trick of
Hippogriff is peculiar, viz., that when he loses all faith in himself, he
sinks--in other words, goes to excesses of absurd humility to regain it.
Passion has likewise its panting intervals, but does nothing so
preposterous. The wreath of black briony, spoken of by Tracy as the crown
of Emilia's forehead, had begun to glow with a furnace-colour in
Wilfrid's fancy. It worked a Satanic distraction in him. The girl sat
before him swathed in a darkness, with the edges of the briony leaves
shining deadly--radiant above--young Hecate! The next instant he was
bleeding with pity for her, aching with remorse, and again stung to
intense jealousy of all who might behold her (amid a reserve of angry
sensations at her present happiness).

Why had she not made allowance for his miserable situation that night in
Devon? Why did she not comprehend his difficulties in relation to his
father's affairs? Why did she not know that he could not fail to love her
for ever?

Interrogations such as these were so many switches of the whip in the
flanks of Hippogriff.

Another peculiarity of the animal gifted with wings is, that around the
height he soars to he can see no barriers nor any of the fences raised by
men. And here again he differs from Passion, which may tug against common
sense