er being so
gifted, and whom the Italians, those lovers of fair pseudonymes, called
"La Benedetta," is no other than Clara Benette. But these are trivial,
compared with Rodomant and Porphyro. It was daring enough, when
Beckendorf mimicked Prince Metternich; but to undertake and to contrast
Louis Napoleon and Beethoven, without belittling either, pales every
other performance. They tower before us grand and immutable as if cast
in bronze, and so veritable that they throw shadows; the prison-gloom is
sealed on Porphyro's face,--power and purpose indomitable; just as the
"gruesome Emperor" is to-day, we find him in that book,--dark in the
midst of his glory, as enduring as a Ninevite sculpture, strong and
inscrutable as the Sphinx. But his heights topple over with this world's
decline, while the other builds for the eternal aeons. Rodomant,--did
one fail to find his identity, they would yet recognize him in those old
prints, the listening head bent forwards, the features like discords
melting info chords; it is hard to tell how such strength was given in
such slight sentences,--but from the time when he contemptuously tossed
out his tune-fooleries, through the hour when with moonlight fancies "a
serene ecstatic serenade was rippling silently beneath his pen," to that
when the organ burst upon his ear in thunders quenchless and everlasting
as the sea's, he is still Beethoven, gigantic in pride, purity, and
passion. "I dream now," said Rodomant; "like the Spirit of God moving
upon the face of the waters, so stir my shadows, dim shapes of sound,
across the chaos of my fathomless intention." This "Rumour" has never
been reprinted in America; it will, then, be excusable to give here a
scene which Is indeed its climax.

"A spiritual nature has for its highest and hardest temptation a
disposition to outrage, precedent,--sometimes propriety. It is sure
of itself--very likely--but it may endanger the machinery, moral or
tangible, which it employs for agent. Again, who has not dreamed of a
dream? who has not remembered dimly what yet experience contradicts? who
does not confound fact and imagination, to the damage of his reputation
for truth?

"Rodomant was in a lawless frame, a frame he had fixed on himself by his
outrage on precedent; his subsequent excitement had enchanted him more
wildly, and any number of imps and elves were ready to rush at his
silent word from the caverns of his haunted brain. Again, he felt
he must spend h