vidently meaning
himself, "in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing Fantasy, the
more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his
feeling towards the Queens of this Earth was, and indeed is, altogether
unspeakable. A visible Divinity dwelt in them; to our young Friend all
women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them flitting past, in
their many-colored angel-plumage; or hovering mute and inaccessible on
the outskirts of _AEsthetic Tea_: all of air they were, all Soul and
Form; so lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the
invisible Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very Heaven. That
he, our poor Friend, should ever win for himself one of these Gracefuls
(_Holden_)--_Ach Gott_! how could he hope it; should he not have died
under it? There was a certain delirious vertigo in the thought.

"Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and Angels such as
the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of
true Sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him wheresoever he
went; and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet
it was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them. But
now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden, incorporated
into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric glance of kind
eyes, saying thereby, 'Thou too mayest love and be loved;' and so kindle
him,--good Heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming
fire were probably kindled!"

Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst forth, with
explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as
indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style,
we might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability;
with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the
whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace
of Fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready,
on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze up? Neither, in this our
Life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel,
whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts
of _AEsthetic Tea_," flit higher; and, by electric Promethean glance,
kindle no despicable firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework,
and flamed off rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendor,
eac