nature which, in copying
the Infinite, had learned not only the tender beauty of flowers, the
consolations of the clouds, the grandeur of mountains, seas, and rocks,
but the beauty of common scenes, the grass and herbage of daily
intercourse and use. Touching the world at all points, he had something
to give and receive from nearly every one he met; and, as Sydney Smith
has said Dr. Chalmers was a thousand men in one, I can say that he had
the versatility and power of ten ordinary artists. At the time, however,
nothing of all this was in my mind; only a certain sense of satisfaction
took the place of disappointment, as I looked at the picture. He had
given clearly the impression of magnitude in the gigantic mass of gray
limestone which juts out of the deep blue Spanish sea. Misty flakes of
dispersing cloud above suggested the recent rain which had clothed its
frequently barren sides with a mantle of verdure. A few bell-shaped
blossoms hung over crevices of rock, fearless in the frail foothold of
their thread-like stems, as innocent child-faces above a precipice. It
was in this simple way, and by the isthmus of sand connecting it to the
continent, long and level, like the dash Nature made after so grand a
work, before descending to the commonplaces of ordinary creation, that
he had toned down the grandeur of stern old Gibraltar.

Miss Darry Indulged me long in my desire to look at the first fine
picture I had ever seen; but when other guests entered, we withdrew to
the farther side of the room, where I was not left in undisturbed
possession of her society, though conscious that she never, for a
moment, lost sight of me or my manner of acquitting myself. Miss Merton,
Miss Darry, Mr. Lang, Mr. Leopold, and a few others, formed the group of
talkers; and I stood within the circle, a listener, until Miss Darry and
Mr. Leopold obliged me to participate. They had an admirable power of
drawing each other out, and he seemed greatly attracted by her brilliant
criticisms of life and Art. Had I known of the theory which, robbed of
its metaphysical subtilties, is advanced in some of our fashionable
romances, I should have been convinced that evening that Miss Darry was,
intellectually at least, my counterpart. If I faltered in my vocabulary,
when expressing an opinion or replying to a question, she supplied the
missing word, or by glance and approving smile reassured me to recall
it; if my thought lacked shape and completeness, she g