vision, instead of labouring with a Drop-scene brush, as if it
were to the eye; because our flying minds cannot contain a protracted
description. That is why the poets, who spring imagination with a word or a
phrase, paint lasting pictures. The Shakespearian, the Dantesque, are in a line,
two at most. He lends an attentive ear when I speak, agrees or has a quaint
pucker of the eyebrows dissenting inwardly. He lacks mental liveliness -
cheerfulness, I should say, and is thankful to have it imparted. One suspects he
would be a dull domestic companion. He has a veritable thirst for hopeful views
of the world, and no spiritual distillery of his own. He leans to depression.
Why! The broken reed you call your Tony carries a cargo, all of her manufacture
- she reeks of secret stills; and here is a young man - a sapling oak - inclined
to droop. His nature has an air of imploring me que je l'arrose! I begin to
perform Mrs. Dr. Pangloss on purpose to brighten him - the mind, the views. He
is not altogether deficient in conversational gaiety, and he shines in exercise.
But the world is a poor old ball bounding down a hill - to an Irish melody in
the evening generally, by request. So far of Mr. Percy Dacier, of whom I have
some hopes - distant, perhaps delusive - that he may be of use to our cause. He
listens. It is an auspicious commencement.«
    Lugano is the Italian lake most lovingly encircled by mountain arms, and
every height about it may be scaled with ease. The heights have their nest of
waters below for a home scene, the southern Swiss peaks, with celestial Monta
Rosa, in prospect. It was there that Diana reawakened, after the trance of a
deadly draught, to the glory of the earth and her share in it. She wakened like
the Princess of the Kiss; happily not to kisses; to no sign, touch or call that
she could trace backward. The change befell her without a warning. After writing
deliberately to her friend Emma, she laid down her pen and thought of nothing;
and into this dreamfulness a wine passed, filling her veins, suffusing her mind,
quickening her soul: - and coming whence? out of air, out of the yonder of air.
She could have imagined a seraphic presence in the room, that bade her arise and
live; take the cup of the wells of youth arrested at her lips by her marriage;
quit her wintry bondage for warmth,