come to
some knowledge of what Byron was,' said Guy.

'The fascination of his "Giaour" heroes has an evil influence on some
minds,' said Philip. 'I think you do well to avoid it. The half truth,
resulting from its being the effect of self-contemplation, makes it more
dangerous.'

'True,' said Guy, though he little knew how much he owed to having
attended to that caution, for who could have told where the mastery
might have been in the period of fearful conflict with his passions, if
he had been feeding his imagination with the contemplation of revenge,
dark hatred, and malice, and identifying himself with Byron's brooding
and lowering heroes!

'But,' continued Philip, 'I cannot see why you should shun the fine
descriptions which are almost classical--the Bridge of Sighs, the
Gladiator.'

'He may describe the gladiator as much as he pleases,' said Guy; 'indeed
there is something noble in that indignant line--

Butchered to make a Roman holiday;

but that is not like his meddling with these mountains or the sea.'

'Fine description is the point in both. You are over-drawing.'

'My notion is this,' said Guy,--'there is danger in listening to a
man who is sure to misunderstand the voice of nature,--danger, lest by
filling our ears with the wrong voice we should close them to the true
one. I should think there was a great chance of being led to stop
short at the material beauty, or worse, to link human passions with the
glories of nature, and so distort, defile, profane them.'

'You have never read the poem, so you cannot judge,' said Philip,
thinking this extremely fanciful and ultra-fastidious. 'Your rule would
exclude all descriptive poetry, unless it was written by angels, I
suppose?'

'No; by men with minds in the right direction.'

'Very little you would leave us.'

'I don't think so,' said Amabel. 'Almost all the poetry we really care
about was written by such men.'

'Shakspeare, for instance?'

'No one can doubt of the bent of his mind from the whole strain of his
writings,' said Guy. 'So again with Spenser; and as to Milton, though
his religion was not quite the right sort, no one can pretend to say he
had it not. Wordsworth, Scott--'

'Scott?' said Philip.

'Including the descriptions of scenery in his novels,' said Amy, 'where,
I am sure, there is the spirit and the beauty.'

'Or rather, the spirit is the beauty,' said Guy.

'There is a good deal in what you say,' answered Phil