women, in whose placid veins
circulates too little naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public
places; that light yet so stately form; those dark tresses, shading a
face where smiles and sunlight played over earnest deeps: but all this
he had seen only as a magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost
without reality. Her sphere was too far from his; how should she ever
think of him; O Heaven! how should they so much as once meet together?
And now that Rose-goddess sits in the same circle with him; the light
of _her_ eyes has smiled on him; if he speak, she will hear it! Nay,
who knows, since the heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but
Blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable; perhaps,
from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder,
gathered favour for him? Was the attraction, the agitation mutual,
then; pole and pole trembling towards contact, when once brought into
neighbourhood? Say rather, heart swelling in presence of the Queen of
Hearts; like the Sea swelling when once near its Moon! With the
Wanderer it was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at
the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its
deepest recesses; and all that was painful and that was blissful
there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole Past and a whole Future,
are heaving in unquiet eddies within him.

'Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend shrunk
forcibly together; and shrouded-up his tremors and flutterings, of
what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming
Stolidity. How was it, then, that here, when trembling to the core of
his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose into strength, into
fearlessness and clearness? It was his guiding Genius (_Daemon_) that
inspired him; he must go forth and meet his Destiny. Show thyself now,
whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even when your
anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself able
to transcend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; and borne
on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because so
rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer remember, with a
certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat not silent,
but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which
thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say
that he continued to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain
inspiratio