d filled them at the meanness of the Corsican, who posed after it
as victim on St. Helena's rock; the scene in grey dawn on Mantua's
fortress-walls blasting him in the Courts of History, when he strikes
for his pathetic sublime.

Victor remembered how he had been rhetorical, as the mouthpiece of
his darlings. But he had in memory prominently now the many glorious
pictures of that mountain-land beckoning to him, waving him to fly forth
from the London oven:--lo, the Tyrolese limestone crags with livid peaks
and snow lining shelves and veins of the crevices; and folds of pinewood
undulations closed by a shoulder of snow large on the blue; and a
dazzling pinnacle rising over green pasture-Alps, the head of it
shooting aloft as the blown billow, high off a broken ridge, and
wide-armed in its pure white shroud beneath; tranced, but all motion in
immobility, to the heart in the eye; a splendid image of striving, up to
crowned victory. And see the long valley-sweeps of the hanging meadows
and maize, and lower vineyards and central tall green spires! Walking
beside young Dudley, conversing, observing too, Victor followed the
trips and twists of a rill, that was lured a little further down through
scoops, ducts, and scaffolded channels to serve a wainwright.

He heard the mountain-song of the joyful water: a wren-robin-thrush on
the dance down of a faun; till it was caught and muted, and the silver
foot slid along the channel, swift as moonbeams through a cloud, with an
air of 'Whither you will, so it be on'; happy for service as in freedom.
Then the yard of the inn below, and the rillwater twirling rounded
through the trout-trough, subdued, still lively for its beloved onward:
dues to business, dues to pleasure; a wedding of the two, and the wisest
on earth:-eh? like some one we know, and Nataly has made the comparison.
Fresh forellen for lunch: rhyming to Fenellan, he had said to her; and
that recollection struck the day to blaze; for his friend was a ruined
military captain living on a literary quill at the time; and Nataly's
tender pleading, 'Could you not help to give him another chance, dear
Victor?'--signifying her absolute trust in his ability to do that or
more or anything, had actually set him thinking of the Insurance Office;
which he started to prosperity, and Fenellan in it, previously an
untutored rill of the mountains, if ever was one.

Useless to be dwelling on holiday pictures: Lakelands had hold of him!

Col