king up to the hero for whom she had given up all, with eyes of
everlasting love. There they were to prophesy to him such things as
seemed fit to him, of the future of Italy and of Europe, of the
doom of priests and tyrants, of the sorrows and rewards of genius
unappreciated and before its age; for Elsley's secret vanity could
see in himself a far greater likeness to Dolcino, than Dolcino--the
preacher, confessor, bender of all hearts, man of the world and man
of action, at last crafty and all but unconquerable guerilla
warrior--would ever have acknowledged in the self-indulgent dreamer.
However, it was a fair conception enough; though perhaps it never
would have entered Elsley's head, had Shelley never written the
opening canto of the Revolt of Islam.

So Elsley, on a burning July forenoon, strolled up the lane and over
the down to King Arthur's Nose, that he might find materials for his
sea-shore scene. For he was not one of those men who live in such
quiet, everyday communication with nature, that they drink in her
various aspects as unconsciously as the air they breathe; and so can
reproduce them, out of an inexhaustible stock of details, simply and
accurately, and yet freshly too, tinged by the peculiar hue of the
mind in which they have been long sleeping. He walked the world,
either blind to the beauty round him, and trying to compose instead
some little scrap of beauty in his own self-imprisoned thoughts; or
else he was looking out consciously and spasmodically for views,
effects, emotions, images; something striking and uncommon which would
suggest a poetic figure, or help out a description, or in some way
re-furnish his mind with thought. From which method it befell, that
his lamp of truth was too often burnt out just when it was needed; and
that, like the foolish virgins, he had to go and buy oil when it
was too late; or failing that, to supply its place with some baser
artificial material.

That day, however, he was fortunate enough; for wandering and
scrambling among the rocks, at a dead low spring tide, he came upon
a spot which would have made a poem of itself better than all Elsley
ever wrote, had he, forgetting all about Fra Dolcino, Italy, priests,
and tyrants, set down in black and white just what he saw; provided,
of course, that he had patience first to see the same.

It was none other than that ghastly chasm across which Thurnall had
been so miraculously swept, on the night of his shipwreck. The