passing the night somewhere, where a
stranger, utterly unknown to us, occupies a room from which we can hear
the sound of his footsteps. Suppose that through the tranquil hours of
the night we hear his measured tread falling in equally accented and
monotonous spondees, it is certain that a quick imagination will at once
associate this deliberate tread with the state of mind in the unknown
from which it will believe it to proceed, and will immediately suggest
that the stranger is maturing some great design of heavy import to his
future peace.

Should the character of the spondaic tread suddenly change, should the
footsteps become rapid, eager, and broken, we look upon the term of
meditation and doubt as over, the resolve as definitely fixed, and the
unknown as restlessly longing for the hour of its fulfilment.

When we hear steps resembling dactyls, anapaests, and choriambs thrown
hurriedly together, broken by irregular pauses, we begin to build a
whole romance on the steps of the stranger; we infer from them moments
of grave deliberation; the languor consequent upon overwrought thought;
renewed effort; resolve; alternations of passion; hope struggling with
despair; until all at last seems merged in impatient longing for the
hour of anticipated victory.

Nor has the imagination been alone in its strange workings; it has
whispered, as it always does, its secrets to the heart, and succeeded in
arousing its ever-ready affections, so that we cannot help feeling a
degree of interest in the unknown, whose emotions we have followed
through the night, reading their history in his alternating footsteps:
_for sounds impress themselves immediately upon the feelings, exciting,
not abstract or antagonistic thought, but uniting humanity in concrete
feeling_. (See vol. i.)

As the imagination necessarily associates different feelings with
different orders of Rhythm, it is the task of the Poet to select those
in the closest conformity with the emotions he is struggling to excite.
It is positively certain that we not only naturally and intuitively
_associate_ distinctive feelings with different orders of rhythmical
sounds, but that varied emotions are _awakened_ by them. Some rhythms
inspire calmness, some sublime and stately courage, some energy and
aggressive force, some stir the spirit to the most daring deeds, some,
as in our maddening Tarantulas, produce a restless excitement through
the whole nervous system, some excite mere jo