As for the mere candles, if
placed on a deal dresser or shop-counter, they might have failed to
touch him; but if burning in some _lyke_-wake beside the dead, or in
some vaulted crypt or lonely rock-cave, he also could not have looked
other than poetically on them. I have seen him awed into deep solemnity,
in our walks, by the rising moon, as it peered down upon us over the
hill, red and broad, and cloud-encircled, through the interstices of
some clump of dark firs; and have observed him become suddenly silent,
as, emerging from the moonlight woods, we looked into a rugged dell, and
saw far beneath, the slim rippling streamlet gleaming in the light, like
a narrow strip of the aurora borealis shot athwart a dark sky, when the
steep rough sides of the ravine, on either hand, were enveloped in
gloom. My friend's opportunities of general reading had not been equal
to my own, but he was acquainted with at least one class of books of
which I knew scarce anything;--he had carefully studied Hogarth's
"Analysis of Beauty," Fresnoy's "Art of Painting," Gessner's "Letters,"
the "Lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds," and several other works of a
similar kind; and in all the questions of criticism that related to
external form, the effects of light and shade, and the influences of the
meteoric media, I found him a high authority. He had a fine eye for
detecting the peculiar features which gave individuality and character
to a landscape--those features, as he used to say, which the artist or
poet should seize and render prominent, while, at the same time, lest
they should be lost as in a mob, he softened down the others; and,
recognising him as a master in this department of characteristic
selection, I delighted to learn in his school--by far the best of its
kind I ever attended. I was able, however, in part to repay him, by
introducing him to many an interesting spot among the rocks, or to
retired dells and hollows in the woods, which, from his sedentary
habits, he would scarce ever have discovered for himself. I taught him
too, to light fires after nightfall in the caves, that we might watch
the effects of the strong lights and deep shadows in scenes so wild; and
I still vividly remember the delight he experienced, when, after
kindling up in the day-time a strong blaze at the mouth of the Doocot
Cave, which filled the recess within with smoke, we forced our way
inwards through the cloud, to mark the appearance of the sea and the
opposi