nature,--that I had exhausted its treasures before my
time, and left my heart a bankrupt. Not till the last--not till that
glorious soul broke out in all its brightness the nearer it approached
the source to which it has returned--did I feel of what tenderness she
was worthy and I was capable. She died, and the world was darkened!
Energy, ambition, my former aims and objects, were all sacrificed at her
tomb. But amidst ruins and through the darkness, my soul yet supported
me; I could no longer hope, but I could endure. I was resolved that
I would not be subdued, and that the world should not hear me groan.
Amidst strange and far-distant scenes, amidst hordes to whom my very
language was unknown, in wastes and forests, which the step of civilized
man, with his sorrows and his dreams, had never trodden, I wrestled with
my soul, as the patriarch of old wrestled with the angel,--and the angel
was at last the victor! You do not mistake me: you know that it was not
the death of Florence alone that worked in me that awful revolution;
but with that death the last glory fled from the face of things that
had seemed to me beautiful of old. Hers was a love that accompanied and
dignified the schemes and aspirations of manhood,--a love that was an
incarnation of ambition itself; and all the evils and disappointments
that belong to ambition seemed to crowd around my heart like vultures
to a feast allured and invited by the dead. But this at length was
over; the barbarous state restored me to the civilized. I returned to
my equals, prepared no more to be an actor in the strife, but a calm
spectator of the turbulent arena. I once more laid my head beneath the
roof of my fathers; and if without any clear and definite object, I
at least hoped to find amidst "my old hereditary trees" the charm
of contemplation and repose. And scarce--in the first hours of my
arrival--had I indulged that dream, when a fair face, a sweet voice,
that had once before left deep and unobliterated impressions on my
heart, scattered all my philosophy to the winds. I saw Evelyn! and if
ever there was love at first sight, it was that which I felt for her: I
lived in her presence, and forgot the Future! Or, rather, I was with
the Past,--in the bowers of my springtide of life and hope! It was an
after-birth of youth--my love for that young heart!

It is, indeed, only in maturity that we know how lovely were our
earliest years! What depth of wisdom in the old Greek myt