RE has so many memories which the place only
can recall. The past that haunts it seems to command such constancy in
the future. If a thought less kind, less trustful, enter within us, the
sight of a tree under which a vow has been exchanged, a tear has
been kissed away, restores us again to the hours of the first divine
illusion. But in a home where nothing speaks of the first nuptials,
where there is no eloquence of association, no holy burial-places of
emotions, whose ghosts are angels!--yes, who that has gone through the
sad history of affection will tell us that the heart changes not with
the scene! Blow fair, ye favouring winds; cheerily swell, ye sails; away
from the land where death has come to snatch the sceptre of Love! The
shores glide by; new coasts succeed to the green hills and orange-groves
of the Bridal Isle. From afar now gleam in the moonlight the columns,
yet extant, of a temple which the Athenian dedicated to wisdom; and,
standing on the bark that bounded on in the freshening gale, the votary
who had survived the goddess murmured to himself,--

"Has the wisdom of ages brought me no happier hours than those common
to the shepherd and the herdsman, with no world beyond their village, no
aspiration beyond the kiss and the smile of home?"

And the moon, resting alike over the ruins of the temple of the
departed creed, over the hut of the living peasant, over the immemorial
mountain-top, and the perishable herbage that clothed its sides, seemed
to smile back its answer of calm disdain to the being who, perchance,
might have seen the temple built, and who, in his inscrutable existence,
might behold the mountain shattered from its base.

BOOK V. -- THE EFFECTS OF THE ELIXIR.

CHAPTER 5.I.

Frommet's den Schleier aufzuheben,
Wo das nahe Schreckness droht?
Nur das Irrthum ist das Leben
Und das Wissen ist der Tod,

--Schiller, Kassandro.

Delusion is the life we live
And knowledge death; oh wherefore, then,
To sight the coming evils give
And lift the veil of Fate to Man?

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.

(Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.)

....

Was stehst du so, und blickst erstaunt hinaus?

(Why standest thou so, and lookest out astonished?)

--"Faust."

It will be remembered that we left Master Paolo by the bedside of
Glyndon; and as, waking from that profound slumber, the recollections of