Under
the meanest exterior there are one knows not what tragedies of denied
hopes and unappeased longings; behind the mask of evil there shines one
knows not what struggling virtue overborne by impulses that flow from
the past like irresistible torrents. Hidden under all manner of
disguises--weakness, poverty, ignorance, vulgarity--there waits a world
of ideals never realised but never lost; the fire of aspiration burns
in a thousand thousand souls that are maimed and broken, bruised and
baffled, but which still survive. Is not this the unquenchable spark
that some day, in freer air, shall break into white flame? It is the
Imagination only that discerns in a thousand contradictions, a thousand
obscurities, the large design to be revealed when the ring of the
hammer has ceased, the dust of toil been laid, the scaffolding removed,
and the finished structure suddenly discloses the miracle wrought among
those who were blind.

VI

I might call him
A thing divine; for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble.

Rosalind was deeply interested in Prospero; and when the Poet and I had
talked long and eagerly about him, she often threw into the current
some comment or suggestion that gave us quite another and clearer view
of his genius and work. But at heart Rosalind's chief interest was in
Miranda and Ferdinand. The presence of Prospero had given the island a
solemn and far-reaching significance in the geography of the world;
Miranda and Ferdinand had left an unfailing and beguiling charm about
the place. If we could have known the point where these two fresh and
unspoiled natures met, I am confident we should have stayed there by
common but unspoken consent. After all our discoveries in this
mysterious world, youth and love remain the first and sweetest in our
thoughts: there is nothing which takes their place, nothing which
imparts their glow, nothing which conveys such deep and beautiful hints
of the better things to be. Miranda had known no companionship but her
father's, no world but the sea-encircled island, no life but the
secluded and eventless existence in that wave-swept solitude. She had
had the rare good fortune to ripen under the spell of pure, high
thoughts, and so near to Nature that no grosser currents of influence
had borne her away from the most wholesome and consoling of all
companionships. Ferdinand came from the shows of royalty and small
falsities of courtiers; the palace, the c