were, and
haunt them. The music, once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort
of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and
galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living
as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air. Now at times, then,
these phantoms of sound floated back upon her fancy; if gay, to call
a smile from every dimple; if mournful, to throw a shade upon her
brow,--to make her cease from her childishmirth, and sit apart and muse.

Rightly, then, in a typical sense, might this fair creature, so airy in
her shape, so harmonious in her beauty, so unfamiliar in her ways and
thoughts,--rightly might she be called a daughter, less of the musician
than the music, a being for whom you could imagine that some fate was
reserved, less of actual life than the romance which, to eyes that can
see, and hearts that can feel, glides ever along WITH the actual life,
stream by stream, to the Dark Ocean.

And therefore it seemed not strange that Viola herself, even in
childhood, and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness of
virgin youth, should fancy her life ordained for a lot, whether of bliss
or woe, that should accord with the romance and reverie which made the
atmosphere she breathed. Frequently she would climb through the thickets
that clothed the neighbouring grotto of Posilipo,--the mighty work of
the old Cimmerians,--and, seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge
those visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render
palpable and defined; for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang, is
the heart of dreaming youth! Frequently there, too, beside the threshold
over which the vine-leaves clung, and facing that dark-blue, waveless
sea, she would sit in the autumn noon or summer twilight, and build her
castles in the air. Who doth not do the same,--not in youth alone, but
with the dimmed hopes of age! It is man's prerogative to dream, the
common royalty of peasant and of king. But those day-dreams of hers were
more habitual, distinct, and solemn than the greater part of us indulge.
They seemed like the Orama of the Greeks,--prophets while phantasma.

CHAPTER 1.II.

Fu stupor, fu vaghezza, fu diletto!
"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. ii. xxi.

("Desire it was, 't was wonder, 't was delight."
Wiffen's Translation.)

Now at last the education is accomplished! Viola is nearly sixteen.
The Cardinal declares that the time is