utterings and training the energies of the
restless merlin. In managing the wild instincts of the scarce manageable
_bete fauve_ my powers would revel.

"O my pupil! O Peri! too mutinous for heaven, too innocent for hell,
never shall I do more than see, and worship, and wish for thee. Alas!
knowing I could make thee happy, will it be my doom to see thee
possessed by those who have not that power?

"However kindly the hand, if it is feeble, it cannot bend Shirley; and
she must be bent. It cannot curb her; and she must be curbed.

"Beware, Sir Philip Nunnely! I never see you walking or sitting at her
side, and observe her lips compressed, or her brow knit, in resolute
endurance of some trait of your character which she neither admires nor
likes, in determined toleration of some weakness she believes atoned for
by a virtue, but which annoys her despite that belief; I never mark the
grave glow of her face, the unsmiling sparkle of her eye, the slight
recoil of her whole frame when you draw a little too near, and gaze a
little too expressively, and whisper a little too warmly--I never
witness these things but I think of the fable of Semele reversed.

"It is not the daughter of Cadmus I see, nor do I realize her fatal
longing to look on Jove in the majesty of his god-head. It is a priest
of Juno that stands before me, watching late and lone at a shrine in an
Argive temple. For years of solitary ministry he has lived on dreams.
There is divine madness upon him. He loves the idol he serves, and prays
day and night that his frenzy may be fed, and that the Ox-eyed may smile
on her votary. She has heard; she will be propitious. All Argos
slumbers. The doors of the temple are shut; the priest waits at the
altar.

"A shock of heaven and earth is felt--not by the slumbering city, only
by that lonely watcher, brave and unshaken in his fanaticism. In the
midst of silence, with no preluding sound, he is wrapped in sudden
light. Through the roof, through the rent, wide-yawning, vast,
white-blazing blue of heaven above, pours a wondrous descent, dread as
the downrushing of stars. He has what he asked. Withdraw--forbear to
look--I am blinded. I hear in that fane an unspeakable sound. Would that
I could not hear it! I see an insufferable glory burning terribly
between the pillars. Gods be merciful and quench it!

"A pious Argive enters to make an early offering in the cool dawn of
morning. There was thunder in the night; the bolt fell