duce. And as in certain
climates plants and herbs, peculiarly adapted as antidotes to those
diseases most prevalent in the atmosphere, are profusely sown, as it
were, by the benignant providence of Nature, so it may be that the
softer and more romantic species of poetry, which comes forth in
harsh, money-making, unromantic times, is intended as curatives and
counter-poisons. The world is so much with us, nowadays, that we need
have something that prates to us, albeit even in too fine a euphuism, of
the moon and stars.

Certes, to Leonard Fairfield, at that period of his intellectual life,
the softness of our Helicon descended as healing dews. In his turbulent
and unsettled ambition, in his vague grapple with the giant forms of
political truths, in his bias towards the application of science to
immediate practical purposes, this lovely vision of the Muse came in the
white robe of the Peacemaker; and with upraised hand pointing to serene
skies, she opened to him fair glimpses of the Beautiful, which is given
to Peasant as to Prince,--showed to him that on the surface of earth
there is something nobler than fortune, that he who can view the world
as a poet is always at soul a king; while to practical purpose itself,
that larger and more profound invention, which poetry stimulates,
supplied the grand design and the subtle view,--leading him beyond the
mere ingenuity of the mechanic, and habituating him to regard the inert
force of the matter at his command with the ambition of the Discoverer.
But, above all, the discontent that was within him finding a vent, not
in deliberate war upon this actual world, but through the purifying
channels of song, in the vent itself it evaporated, it was lost. By
accustoming ourselves to survey all things with the spirit that retains
and reproduces them only in their lovelier or grander aspects, a vast
philosophy of toleration for what we before gazed on with scorn or
hate insensibly grows upon us. Leonard looked into his heart after the
Enchantress had breathed upon it; and through the mists of the fleeting
and tender melancholy which betrayed where she had been, he beheld a new
sun of delight and joy dawning over the landscape of human life.

Thus, though she was dead and gone from his actual knowledge, this
mysterious kinswoman--"a voice, and nothing more"--had spoken to him,
soothed, elevated, cheered, attuned each discord into harmony; and if
now permitted from some serener sphere to b