es, brought
together, seemed, where varying still, to melt and fuse their affluences
into one wealth of innocence and sweetness. Both had a native buoyancy
and cheerfulness of spirit, a noble trustfulness in others, a singular
candour and freshness of mind and feeling. But beneath the gayety of
Helen there was a soft and holy under-stream of thoughtful melancholy,
a high and religious sentiment, that vibrated more exquisitely to the
subtle mysteries of creation, the solemn unison between the bright
world without and the grave destinies of that world within (which is
an imperishable soul), than the lighter and more vivid youthfulness of
Percival had yet conceived. In him lay the germs of the active mortal
who might win distinction in the bold career we run upon the surface of
the earth. In her there was that finer and more spiritual essence
which lifts the poet to the golden atmosphere of dreams, and reveals in
glimpses to the saint the choral Populace of Heaven. We do not say
that Helen would ever have found the utterance of the poet, that her
reveries, undefined and unanalyzed, could have taken the sharp, clear
form of words; for to the poet practically developed and made manifest
to the world, many other gifts besides the mere poetic sense are
needed,--stern study, and logical generalization of scattered truths,
and patient observation of the characters of men, and the wisdom that
comes from sorrow and passion, and a sage's experience of things actual,
embracing the dark secrets of human infirmity and crime. But despite all
that has been said in disparagement or disbelief of "mute, inglorious
Miltons," we maintain that there are natures in which the divinest
element of poetry exists, the purer and more delicate for escaping from
bodily form and evaporating from the coarser vessels into which the
poet, so called, must pour the ethereal fluid. There is a certain virtue
within us, comprehending our subtlest and noblest emotions, which is
poetry while untold, and grows pale and poor in proportion as we strain
it into poems. Nay, it may be said of this airy property of our inmost
being that, more or less, it departs from us according as we give it
forth into the world, even, as only by the loss of its particles, the
rose wastes its perfume on the air. So this more spiritual sensibility
dwelt in Helen as the latent mesmerism in water, as the invisible
fairy in an enchanted ring. It was an essence or divinity, shrined and
shr