astily to dress and prepare herself for going out along
with me to the city. I did not ask her to be quick in her movements: I knew
there was no need: and, whilst she was absent, I took up, in one of my
fretful movements of nervousness, a book which was lying upon a side table:
the book fell open of itself at a particular page; and in that, perhaps,
there was nothing extraordinary; for it was a little portable edition of
_Paradise Lost_; and the page was one which I must naturally have turned to
many a time: for to Agnes I had read all the great masters of literature,
especially those of modern times; so that few people knew the high classics
more familiarly: and as to the passage in question, from its divine beauty I
had read it aloud to her, perhaps, on fifty separate occasions. All this I
mention to take away any appearance of a vulgar attempt to create omens; but
still, in the very act of confessing the simple truth, and thus weakening
the marvellous character of the anecdote, I must notice it as a strange
instance of the '_Sortes Miltonianae_'--that precisely at such a moment as
this I should find thrown in my way, should feel tempted to take up, and
should open, a volume containing such a passage as the following: and
observe, moreover, that although the volume, _once being taken up_, would
naturally open where it had been most frequently read, there were, however,
many passages which had been read _as_ frequently--or more so. The
particular passage upon which I opened at this moment was that most
beautiful one in which the fatal morning separation is described between
Adam and his bride--that separation so pregnant with wo, which eventually
proved the occasion of the mortal transgression--the last scene between our
first parents at which both were innocent and both were happy--although the
superior intellect already felt, and, in the slight altercation preceding
this separation, had already expressed a dim misgiving of some coming
change: these are the words, and in depth of pathos they have rarely been
approached:--

'Oft he to her his charge of quick return
Repeated; she to him as oft engag'd
To be returned by noon amid the bow'r,
And all things in best order to invite
Noon-tide repast, or afternoon's repose.
Oh much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve!
Of thy presumed return, event perverse!
Thou never from that hour in Paradise
Found'st either sweet repast, or soun