iest sensibility to feminine influence, but who had never quaffed
the cup of passionate love, and knew that it was now too late. He knew
it, with the instinctive delicacy that had survived his intellectual
decay. Thus, his sentiment for Phoebe, without being paternal, was not
less chaste than if she had been his daughter. He was a man, it is
true, and recognized her as a woman. She was his only representative
of womankind. He took unfailing note of every charm that appertained
to her sex, and saw the ripeness of her lips, and the virginal
development of her bosom. All her little womanly ways, budding out of
her like blossoms on a young fruit-tree, had their effect on him, and
sometimes caused his very heart to tingle with the keenest thrills of
pleasure. At such moments,--for the effect was seldom more than
momentary,--the half-torpid man would be full of harmonious life, just
as a long-silent harp is full of sound, when the musician's fingers
sweep across it. But, after all, it seemed rather a perception, or a
sympathy, than a sentiment belonging to himself as an individual. He
read Phoebe as he would a sweet and simple story; he listened to her as
if she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in requital of his
bleak and dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that most pitied him,
to warble through the house. She was not an actual fact for him, but
the interpretation of all that he lacked on earth brought warmly home
to his conception; so that this mere symbol, or life-like picture, had
almost the comfort of reality.

But we strive in vain to put the idea into words. No adequate
expression of the beauty and profound pathos with which it impresses us
is attainable. This being, made only for happiness, and heretofore so
miserably failing to be happy,--his tendencies so hideously thwarted,
that, some unknown time ago, the delicate springs of his character,
never morally or intellectually strong, had given way, and he was now
imbecile,--this poor, forlorn voyager from the Islands of the Blest, in
a frail bark, on a tempestuous sea, had been flung, by the last
mountain-wave of his shipwreck, into a quiet harbor. There, as he lay
more than half lifeless on the strand, the fragrance of an earthly
rose-bud had come to his nostrils, and, as odors will, had summoned up
reminiscences or visions of all the living and breathing beauty amid
which he should have had his home. With his native susceptibility of
hap