and man as transformed into a creature of
feeling and passion by the mysterious conditions of his existence, which
oftenest arouses the poetic fervor in her. The enthusiasm of high resolves,
yearnings after the pure and beautiful, and love's regenerating power, give
to her themes which kindle poetic expression to a glow. The vision of
Mordecai on Blackfriars' bridge affords a fine example of her love of the
ideal in moral purpose, and shows how stimulating it is to her imagination.
It is a poetic picture of the finest quality she has given in this chapter,
one that could easily have been made to find expression in verse of great
beauty; but it is poetry in thought and spirit alone, not in form or
structure. It is true prose in form, strong in its fulness of detail, knit
together with words of the right texture, built up into a true prose image
of beauty in thought.

Mordecai's mind wrought so constantly in images that his coherent
trains of thought often resembled the significant dreams attributed to
sleepers by waking persons in their most inventive moments; nay, they
often resembled genuine dreams in their way of breaking off the passage
from the known to the unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually
thought of the Being answering to his need as one distinctly
approaching or turning his back toward him, darkly painted against a
golden sky. The reason of the golden sky lay in one of Mordecai's
habits. He was keenly alive to some poetic aspects of London; and a
favorite resort of his, when strength and leisure allowed, was to some
one of the bridges, especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he
was bending over watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small upper
room looking out on dingy bricks and dingy cracked windows, his
imagination spontaneously planted him on some spot where he had a
far-stretching scene; his thought went on in wide spaces, and whenever
he could, he tried to have in reality the influences of a large sky.
Leaning on the parapet of Blackfriars' bridge, and gazing meditatively,
the breadth and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, half
luminous, the grand dim masses or tall forms of buildings which were
the signs of world-commerce, the on-coming of boats and barges from the
still distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent
themselves indistinguishably with his thinking, as