emn grief in the eyes! They looked blankly at
the object before them, but through it, as it were, and into the grief
beyond. In moments of pain, have you not looked at some indifferent
object so? It mingles dumbly with your grief, and remains afterwards
connected with it in your mind. It may be some indifferent thing--a book
which you were reading at the time when you received her farewell letter
(how well you remember the paragraph afterwards--the shape of the words,
and their position on the page); the words you were writing when
your mother came in, and said it was all over--she was MARRIED--Emily
married--to that insignificant little rival at whom you have laughed a
hundred times in her company. Well, well; my friend and reader, whoe'er
you be--old man or young, wife or maiden--you have had your grief-pang.
Boy, you have lain awake the first night at school, and thought of
home. Worse still, man, you have parted from the dear ones with bursting
heart: and, lonely boy, recall the bolstering an unfeeling comrade gave
you; and, lonely man, just torn from your children--their little tokens
of affection yet in your pocket--pacing the deck at evening in the midst
of the roaring ocean, you can remember how you were told that supper was
ready, and how you went down to the cabin and had brandy-and-water and
biscuit. You remember the taste of them. Yes; for ever. You took them
whilst you and your Grief were sitting together, and your Grief clutched
you round the soul. Serpent, how you have writhed round me, and bitten
me. Remorse, Remembrance, &c., come in the night season, and I feel you
gnawing, gnawing! . . . I tell you that man's face was like Laocoon's
(which, by the way, I always think over-rated. The real head is at
Brussels, at the Duke Daremberg's, not at Rome).

That man! What man? That man of whom I said that his magnificent
countenance exhibited the noblest tragic woe. He was not of European
blood, he was handsome, but not of European beauty. His face white--not
of a Northern whiteness; his eyes protruding somewhat, and rolling in
their grief. Those eyes had seen the Orient sun, and his beak was the
eagle's. His lips were full. The beard, curling round them, was unkempt
and tawny. The locks were of a deep, deep coppery red. The hands, swart
and powerful, accustomed to the rough grasp of the wares in which he
dealt, seemed unused to the flimsy artifices of the bath. He came from
the Wilderness, and its sands were on