t of life's cessation--but commence with that sad, sad
instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into a
breathless and motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid
eyelids with the passionate fingers of love.

'Monos'.

One word first, my Una, in regard to man's general condition at this
epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise among our
forefathers--wise in fact, although not in the world's esteem--had
ventured to doubt the propriety of the term "improvement," as applied
to the progress of our civilization. There were periods in each of the
five or six centuries immediately preceding our dissolution when arose
some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those principles whose
truth appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly obvious
--principles which should have taught our race to submit to the
guidance of the natural laws rather than attempt their control. At
long intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each advance
in practical science as a retrogradation in the true utility.
Occasionally the poetic intellect--that intellect which we now feel to
have been the most exalted of all--since those truths which to us were
of the most enduring importance could only be reached by that
_analogy_ which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone, and to
the unaided reason bears no weight--occasionally did this poetic
intellect proceed a step farther in the evolving of the vague idea of
the philosophic, and find in the mystic parable that tells of the tree
of knowledge, and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct
intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant condition
of his soul. And these men--the poets--living and perishing amid the
scorn of the "utilitarians"--of rough pedants, who arrogated to
themselves a title which could have been properly applied only to the
scorned--these men, the poets, pondered piningly, yet not unwisely,
upon the ancient days when our wants were not more simple than our
enjoyments were keen--days when _mirth_ was a word unknown, so
solemnly deep-toned was happiness--holy, august, and blissful days,
blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, into far forest
solitudes, primeval, odorous, and unexplored. Yet these noble
exceptions from the general misrule served but to strengthen it by
opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the most evil of al