e--stand now amidst
the yet ghastlier ruins of Law and Order, the shattering of mankind
themselves! Yet here, even here, Love, the Beautifier, that hath led my
steps, can walk with unshrinking hope through the wilderness of Death.
Strange is the passion that makes a world in itself, that individualises
the One amidst the Multitude; that, through all the changes of my solemn
life, yet survives, though ambition and hate and anger are dead; the one
solitary angel, hovering over a universe of tombs on its two tremulous
and human wings,--Hope and Fear!

How is it, Mejnour, that, as my diviner art abandoned me,--as, in my
search for Viola, I was aided but by the ordinary instincts of the
merest mortal,--how is it that I have never desponded, that I have felt
in every difficulty the prevailing prescience that we should meet at
last? So cruelly was every vestige of her flight concealed from
me,--so suddenly, so secretly had she fled, that all the spies, all the
authorities of Venice, could give me no clew. All Italy I searched in
vain! Her young home at Naples!--how still, in its humble chambers,
there seemed to linger the fragrance of her presence! All the sublimest
secrets of our lore failed me,--failed to bring her soul visible to
mine; yet morning and night, thou lone and childless one, morning and
night, detached from myself, I can commune with my child! There in that
most blessed, typical, and mysterious of all relations, Nature herself
appears to supply what Science would refuse. Space cannot separate the
father's watchful soul from the cradle of his first-born! I know not of
its resting-place and home,--my visions picture not the land,--only the
small and tender life to which all space is as yet the heritage! For to
the infant, before reason dawns,--before man's bad passions can dim
the essence that it takes from the element it hath left, there is no
peculiar country, no native city, and no mortal language. Its soul as
yet is the denizen of all airs and of every world; and in space its
soul meets with mine,--the child communes with the father! Cruel and
forsaking one,--thou for whom I left the wisdom of the spheres;
thou whose fatal dower has been the weakness and terrors of
humanity,--couldst thou think that young soul less safe on earth because
I would lead it ever more up to heaven! Didst thou think that I could
have wronged mine own? Didst thou not know that in its serenest eyes the
life that I gave it spoke to warn