ed with thy hair;

And hushed in thy presence with worshipping fear--
The breeze even stills when it reaches thine ear--
My lips dare not whisper in softest refrain
The trance of my heart in its passionate pain.

Oh, open thine eyes! let their smile make me brave--
The Queen e'en of Ocean will _look_ at her slave!--
Let me drown in their light--deliciously drown,
And lay thy white hand on my head for a crown,

And chrism. And thus regally shrived, might I dare
Exhale the warm infinite incense of prayer
From my deep soul to thine. Nor then couldst thou know
The wealth of the censer. Thou wak'st!--must I go?

A CASTLE IN THE AIR.

'I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell;
I said, 'O soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well.'

TENNYSON.

Times are changed. Most people (_i.e._, Bostonians) now build their
castles on the 'new land.'[4] But I belong to the old school, and I
still build mine in the air.

The situation has its advantages. As Miss Gail Hamilton observed, when I
had the pleasure of exhibiting it to her, it is airy. I need scarcely
add that it is the favorite haunt of those kindred spirits Ari-osto and
Ary Scheffer. It is too high ever to be reached by any unsavory odors
from the Back Bay. Cool in summer it is also, notwithstanding,
remarkably warm in winter. My castle is quite too retired for any
critics to intrude upon it. They cannot get at the plan of it even,
unless in the event of its being shown them by my friend, the editor of
a popular magazine, which is a betrayal too improbable to enter into my
calculations.

There is no stucco or sham about my castle. Like a fair and frank
republican, I built it all of pure freestone, from the doorsteps up to
the observatory. This observatory--I will speak of it while I think of
it--holds a telescope exactly like the one at Cambridge, except that the
tube has a blue-glass spectacle to screw on, through which it does not
put out one's eye to look at the moon.

My workmen never make mistakes nor keep me waiting. The painters paint,
the upholsterers upholster, and the carpenters _carpent_ precisely when
and as I wish. I do not have to heat myself by running over the town for
straw matting, nor to catch cold in crypts full of carpets. Everything
that I order comes to my door as soon as I order.

Every time that I go down Washington