elf, _Ich bin ein Ich_ (I am a ME), and the noble
consciousness overwhelmed him, and excluded all after thoughts on any
minor subject. He never heard Grisi, never saw Rachel; they were
triflers, 'life was too grave, too short;' but he escorted me
occasionally to lectures and orations. I remember two or three of these.
A lecture on the 'Fossils of Humanity and Primeval Formations,' which
was unintelligible, consequently to him 'sublime;' one on 'the Exalted,'
that soared out of sight and beyond the empire of gravity, and one on
'Architecture,' by Dr. Vinton, a splendid production, the fruit and
evidence of years of study and rare talent, that sent me home with
longings and unaccustomed reverence for the Great in every form, and
with grief that my own ignorance rendered it only a half-enjoyed
pleasure to me; while Penhurst talked as if it were only the echo of his
own thoughts; pretended to say it was very 'sensible!' But you've had
enough of Mr. Lane, who was never known to laugh except at his own wit,
who patronized me because I was a 'solid' young lady, and not given to
flights. You may readily imagine that our interviews were generally
_tete-a-tetes_, for general society was to him a thing 'stale, flat, and
unprofitable.' Of course you know I only endured his visits because
among the girls it was considered a compliment to receive them, and they
were all dying of envy. Besides and principally, it is neither politic
nor pleasant to offend any one, and I could not have denied myself to
him, without doing this; so'--

'But, Harry, he is married now.'

'Ah me! yes. He saw me in a cap and bells once with you, Lenox, and not
many weeks afterward married a damsel who reveres him as a Solon, this
man, who said:

----'The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things.
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.'

'_Are_ you done, Harry?'

'Yes, Lenox.'

'Then sing us Beranger's _Grace a la feve, je suis roi_.'

She has such a delicious voice.

'And while I am on tiresome people, who think only of themselves, let me
recall P. George Rawdon; the Raven, Bertha; I always believed his first
name was Pluto, because of the shades around him. They say every one has
a text book; his was neither the Bible, the Prayer Book, Thomas a
Kempis, _La Nouvelle Heloise_, or 'Queechy,' but Mrs. Crowe's 'Night
Side of Nature.' Talk of having a skeleton in the house! t