various distractions and noisy conflicts, lies so far
from their actual existence,--only united to them by the happy link that
the writer weaves invisibly with the hearts that he moves and the souls
that he inspires. No! Character and circumstance alike unfitted Leonard
for the strife of the thronged literary democracy; they led towards the
development of the gentler and purer portions of his nature,--to the
gradual suppression of the more combative and turbulent. The influence
of the happy light under which his genius so silently and calmly grew,
was seen in the exquisite harmony of its colours, rather than the
gorgeous diversities of their glow. His contemplation, intent upon
objects of peaceful beauty, and undisturbed by rude anxieties and
vehement passions, suggested only kindred reproductions to the creative
faculty by which it was vivified; so that the whole man was not only
a poet, but, as it were, a poem,--a living idyl, calling into pastoral
music every reed that sighed and trembled along the stream of life. And
Helen was so suited to a nature of this kind, she so guarded the ideal
existence in which it breathes! All the little cares and troubles of
the common practical life she appropriated so quietly to herself,--the
stronger of the two, as should be a poet's wife, in the necessary
household virtues of prudence and forethought. Thus if the man's genius
made the home a temple, the woman's wisdom gave to the temple the
security of the fortress. They have only one child,--a girl; they call
her Nora. She has the father's soul-lit eyes, and the mother's warm
human smile. She assists Helen in the morning's noiseless domestic
duties; she sits in the evening at Leonard's feet, while he reads or
writes. In each light grief of childhood she steals to the mother's
knee; but in each young impulse of delight, or each brighter flash of
progressive reason, she springs to the father's breast. Sweet Helen,
thou hast taught her this, taking to thyself the shadows even of thine
infant's life, and leaving to thy partner's eyes only its rosy light!

But not here shall this picture of Helen close. Even the Ideal can only
complete its purpose by connection with the Real; even in solitude the
writer must depend upon mankind.

Leonard at last has completed the work, which has been the joy and the
labour of so many years,--the work which he regards as the flower of all
his spiritual being, and to which he has committed all the hopes t