ving 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 masterminds appeared, looking upon each advance in
practical science as a retro-gradation 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, when blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, into
far forest solitudes, primaeval, 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
all our evil days. The great "movement"--that was the cant term--went
on: a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art--the Arts--arose
supreme, and, on