long-beloved eyes,
And sees in their dear depths new meanings rise
And strange light shine he never knew before;
As then he fain would snatch from Death his hand
And linger still, if haply he may see
A little more of this Soul's mystery
Which year by year he seemed to understand;
So, Venice, when thy wondrous beauty grew
Dim in the clouds which clothed the wintry sea
I saw thou wert more beauteous than I knew,
And long to turn and be again with thee.
But what I could not then I trust to see
In that next life which we call memory._

PHILLIPS BROOKS.[2]

FOOTNOTES:

[2] From "Life of Phillips Brooks," by kind permission of Messrs. E. P.
Dutton & Co.

VI

THE GLORY OF A VENETIAN JUNE

I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice.
The Heaven of it is ineffable--never had I touched the skirts of so
celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver
trails of water up between all that gorgeous color and carving, the
enchanting silence, the music, the gondolas,--I mix it all up
together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to
it, no second Venice in the world.

MRS. BROWNING, in the June of 1850.

The first glimpse of enchanted Venice, as her towers and marble palaces
rise wraith-like from the sea, is an experience that can never fade from
memory. Like a mirage, like a vision invoked by some incantation or
magician's spell, the scene prefigures itself, bringing a thrill of some
vague and undefined memory, as if a breath floated by,--

"An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me,
Of a splendor that came and went;
Of a life lived somewhere,--I know not
In what diviner sphere,--
Of memories that stay not and go not,"

which eludes all translation into words. Nor does the spell dissolve and
vanish when put to the test of one's actual sojourn in the Dream City.
It is an experience outside the boundaries of the ordinary day and
daylight world, as if one were caught up into the ethereal realm to find
a city

"... of gliding and wide-wayed silence
With room in the streets for the soul."

The sense of remoteness from common life could hardly be greater if one
were suddenly swept away to some far star, blazing in the firmament; or
if Charon had rowed him over the mystic r