nother. And yet the composition is not dreamy; there is on
it a deep stamp of reality. Still less is it characterised by coldness.
It has visions that we love to look upon, and tones that touch the
inmost heart till it responds.

The poet's confessions are introduced with an analysis of his spiritual
constitution, in which he is described as having an intense
consciousness of individuality, combined with a sense of power, a
self-supremacy, and a "principle of restlessness which would be all, have,
see, know, taste, feel all"; of this essential self, imagination is
described as the characteristic quality; an imagination, steady and
unfailing in its power. A "yearning after God," or supreme and universal
good, unconsciously cherished through the earlier stages of the history,
keeps this mind from utterly dissipating itself; and, which seems to us
the only point in which the coherence fails, there is added an unaptness
for love, a mere perception of the beautiful, the perception being felt
more precious than its object....

And now when he has run the whole toilsome yet giddy round and arrived
at the goal, there arises, even though that goal be religion, or because
it is religion, a yearning after human sympathies and affections, which
would not have assorted with any state or moment of the previous
experience; he could not have loved before; at one time it would have
been only a fancy, a cold, and yet perhaps extravagant imagining; at
another, a low and selfish passion. Some souls are purified _by_ love,
others are purified _for_ love. Othello needed not Desdemona to listen
to his tale of disastrous chances; they were only external perils, rapid
by elevated station; but the mind that has gone through more than his
vicissitudes, been in deeper dangers, and deadlier struggles, even when
it rests at last in a far higher repose and dignity, yearns for some one
who will "seriously incline" to listen to the "strange eventful
history," one who will sympathise and soothe, who will receive the
confession, and give the absolution of heaven its best earthly
ratification, that of a pure and loving heart. The poem is addressed to
Pauline; with her it begins, and ends; and her presence is felt
throughout, as that of a second conscience, wounded by evil, but never
stern, and incorporate in a form of beauty, which blends and softens the
strong contrasts of different portions of the poem, so that all might be
murmured by the breath of af