l of man. Then all at once he became a
corsair, investing himself with the terrible poetry that Lara has given
to the part: the thought came at the sight of the mother-of-pearl tints
of a myriad sea-shells, and grew as he saw madrepores redolent of the
sea-weeds and the storms of the Atlantic.

The sea was forgotten again at a distant view of exquisite miniatures;
he admired a precious missal in manuscript, adorned with arabesques in
gold and blue. Thoughts of peaceful life swayed him; he devoted himself
afresh to study and research, longing for the easy life of the monk,
devoid alike of cares and pleasures; and from the depths of his cell
he looked out upon the meadows, woods, and vineyards of his convent.
Pausing before some work of Teniers, he took for his own the helmet
of the soldier or the poverty of the artisan; he wished to wear a
smoke-begrimed cap with these Flemings, to drink their beer and join
their game at cards, and smiled upon the comely plumpness of a peasant
woman. He shivered at a snowstorm by Mieris; he seemed to take part in
Salvator Rosa's battle-piece; he ran his fingers over a tomahawk
form Illinois, and felt his own hair rise as he touched a Cherokee
scalping-knife. He marveled over the rebec that he set in the hands of
some lady of the land, drank in the musical notes of her ballad, and in
the twilight by the gothic arch above the hearth he told his love in a
gloom so deep that he could not read his answer in her eyes.

He caught at all delights, at all sorrows; grasped at existence in every
form; and endowed the phantoms conjured up from that inert and plastic
material so liberally with his own life and feelings, that the sound of
his own footsteps reached him as if from another world, or as the hum of
Paris reaches the towers of Notre Dame.

He ascended the inner staircase which led to the first floor, with its
votive shields, panoplies, carved shrines, and figures on the wall at
every step. Haunted by the strangest shapes, by marvelous creations
belonging to the borderland betwixt life and death, he walked as if
under the spell of a dream. His own existence became a matter of doubt
to him; he was neither wholly alive nor dead, like the curious objects
about him. The light began to fade as he reached the show-rooms, but
the treasures of gold and silver heaped up there scarcely seemed to need
illumination from without. The most extravagant whims of prodigals, who
have run through millions to