to the front; and she
could have said that a dubious consort might spoil a promising career.
It flattered her to think that she sometimes prompted him, sometimes
illumined. He repeated sentences she had spoken. 'I shall be better
able to describe Mr. Dacier when you and I sit together, my Emmy, and a
stroke here and there completes the painting. Set descriptions are
good for puppets. Living men and women are too various in the mixture
fashioning them--even the "external presentment"--to be livingly
rendered in a formal sketch. I may tell you his eyes are pale blue,
his features regular, his hair silky, brownish, his legs long, his head
rather stooping (only the head), his mouth commonly closed; these are
the facts, and you have seen much the same in a nursery doll. Such
literary craft is of the nursery. So with landscapes. The art of the
pen (we write on darkness) is to rouse the inward vision, instead of
labouring with a Drop-scene brush, as if it were to the eye; because our
flying minds cannot contain a protracted description. That is why the
poets, who spring imagination with a word or a phrase, paint lasting
pictures. The Shakespearian, the Dantesque, are in a line, two at most.
He lends an attentive ear when I speak, agrees or has a quaint
pucker of the eyebrows dissenting inwardly. He lacks mental
liveliness--cheerfulness, I should say, and is thankful to have it
imparted. One suspects he would be a dull domestic companion. He has
a veritable thirst for hopeful views of the world, and no spiritual
distillery of his own. He leans to depression. Why! The broken reed you
call your Tony carries a cargo, all of her manufacture--she reeks of
secret stills; and here is a young man--a sapling oak--inclined to
droop. His nature has an air of imploring me que je d'arrose! I begin
to perform Mrs. Dr. Pangloss on purpose to brighten him--the mind, the
views. He is not altogether deficient in conversational gaiety, and he
shines in exercise. But the world is a poor old ball bounding down a
hill--to an Irish melody in the evening generally, by request. So far
of Mr. Percy Dacier, of whom I have some hopes--distant, perhaps
delusive--that he may be of use to our cause. He listens. It is an
auspicious commencement.'

Lugano is the Italian lake most lovingly encircled by mountain arms, and
every height about it may be scaled with esce. The heights have their
nest of waters below for a home scene, the southern Swiss peaks, with
c