which was evidently associated with insupportable pain.

CHAPTER X.

It is difficult to exaggerate the effect that this discovery produced on
Leonard's train of thought. Some one belonging to his own humble race
had, then, preceded him in his struggling flight towards the lofter
regions of Intelligence and Desire. It was like the mariner amidst
unknown seas, who finds carved upon some desert isle a familiar
household name. And this creature of genius and of sorrow--whose
existence he had only learned by her song, and whose death created, in
the simple heart of her sister, so passionate a grief after the lapse of
so many years--supplied to the romance awaking in his young heart the
ideal which it unconsciously sought. He was pleased to hear that she had
been beautiful and good. He paused from his books to muse on her, and
picture her image to his fancy. That there was some mystery in her fate
was evident to him; and while that conviction deepened his interest, the
mystery itself, by degrees, took a charm which he was not anxious to
dispel. He resigned himself to Mrs. Fairfield's obstinate silence. He
was contented to rank the dead amongst those holy and ineffable images
which we do not seek to unveil. Youth and Fancy have many secret hoards
of idea which they do not desire to impart, even to those most in their
confidence. I doubt the depth of feeling in any man who has not certain
recesses in his soul in which none may enter.

Hitherto, as I have said, the talents of Leonard Fairfield had been more
turned to things positive than to the ideal; to science and
investigation of fact than to poetry, and that airier truth in which
poetry has its element. He had read our greater poets, indeed, but
without thought of imitating; and rather from the general curiosity to
inspect all celebrated monuments of the human mind, than from that
especial predilection for verse which is too common in childhood and
youth to be any sure sign of a poet. But now these melodies, unknown to
all the world beside, rang in his ear, mingled with his thoughts--set,
as it were, his whole life to music. He read poetry with a different
sentiment--it seemed to him that he had discovered its secret. And so
reading, the passion seized him, and "the numbers came."

To many minds, at the commencement of our grave and earnest pilgrimage,
I am Vandal enough to think that the indulgence of poetic taste and
reverie does great and lasting harm; that it serves