quer, where austerer intellect and purer virtue have so often failed.
Thou thinkest, too, that the germ of art that lies in the painter's
mind, as it comprehends in itself the entire embryo of power and beauty,
may be expanded into the stately flower of the Golden Science. It is a
new experiment to thee. Be gentle with thy neophyte, and if his nature
disappoint thee in the first stages of the process, dismiss him back to
the Real while it is yet time to enjoy the brief and outward life which
dwells in the senses, and closes with the tomb. And as I thus admonish
thee, O Mejnour, wilt thou smile at my inconsistent hopes? I, who have
so invariably refused to initiate others into our mysteries,--I begin at
last to comprehend why the great law, which binds man to his kind, even
when seeking most to set himself aloof from their condition, has made
thy cold and bloodless science the link between thyself and thy race;
why, THOU has sought converts and pupils; why, in seeing life after life
voluntarily dropping from our starry order, thou still aspirest to
renew the vanished, and repair the lost; why, amidst thy calculations,
restless and unceasing as the wheels of Nature herself, thou recoilest
from the THOUGHT TO BE ALONE! So with myself; at last I, too, seek a
convert, an equal,--I, too, shudder to be alone! What thou hast warned
me of has come to pass. Love reduces all things to itself. Either must I
be drawn down to the nature of the beloved, or hers must be lifted to
my own. As whatever belongs to true Art has always necessarily had
attraction for US, whose very being is in the ideal whence Art descends,
so in this fair creature I have learned, at last, the secret that bound
me to her at the first glance. The daughter of music,--music, passing
into her being, became poetry. It was not the stage that attracted her,
with its hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy which
the stage seemed to centre and represent. There the poetry found a
voice,--there it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that land
insufficient for it) it fell back upon itself. It coloured her thoughts,
it suffused her soul; it asked not words, it created not things; it gave
birth but to emotions, and lavished itself on dreams. At last came love;
and there, as a river into the sea, it poured its restless waves, to
become mute and deep and still,--the everlasting mirror of the heavens.

And is it not through this poetry which lies within her th