iption of their deeds. That name, Carinthia, went a good
way to fill him.

Farther on he had plenty, but less contentment. He was compelled to
acknowledge that he had expected to meet Carinthia again at the Baths.
Her absence dealt a violent shock to the aerial structure he dwelt in;
for though his ardour for the life of the solitudes was unfeigned, as was
his calm overlooking of social distinctions, the self-indulgent dreamer
became troubled with an alarming sentience, that for him to share the
passions of the world of men was to risk the falling lower than most.
Women are a cause of dreams, but they are dreaded enemies of his kind of
dream, deadly enemies of the immaterial dreamers; and should one of them
be taken on board a vessel of the vapourish texture young Woodseer sailed
in above the clouds lightly while he was in it alone, questions of past,
future, and present, the three weights upon humanity, bear it down, and
she must go, or the vessel sinks. And cast out of it, what was he? The
asking exposed him to the steadiest wind the civilized world is known to
blow. From merely thinking upon one of the daughters of earth, he was
made to feel his position in that world, though he refused to understand
it, and assisted by two days of hard walking he reduced Carinthia to an
abstract enthusiasm, no very serious burden. His note-book sustained it
easily. He wrote her name in simple fondness of the name; a verse, and
hints for more, and some sentences, which he thought profound. They were
composed as he sat by the roadway, on the top of hills, and in a boat
crossing a dark green lake deep under wooded mountain walls: things of
priceless value.

It happened, that midway on the lake he perceived his boatman about to
prime a pistol to murder the mild-eyed stillness, and he called to the
man in his best German to desist. During the altercation, there passed a
countryman of his in another of the punts, who said gravely: 'I thank you
for that.' It was early morning, and they had the lake to themselves,
each deeming the other an intruder; for the courtship of solitude wanes
when we are haunted by a second person in pursuit of it; he is
discolouring matter in our pure crystal cup. Such is the worship of the
picturesque; and it would appear to say, that the spirit of man finds
itself yet in the society of barbarians. The case admits of good pleading
either way, even upon the issue whether the exclusive or the vulgar be
the more ba