lar quality of taste on
his part; and also, in the sad parts of his books, a sort of roughness,
a tone that was almost harsh. And he himself, no doubt, realised that
these were his principal attractions. For in his later books, if he had
hit upon some great truth, or upon the name of an historic cathedral,
he would break off his narrative, and in an invocation, an apostrophe, a
lengthy prayer, would give a free outlet to that effluence which, in
the earlier volumes, remained buried beneath the form of his prose,
discernible only in a rippling of its surface, and perhaps even more
delightful, more harmonious when it was thus veiled from the eye, when
the reader could give no precise indication of where the murmur of the
current began, or of where it died away. These passages in which he
delighted were our favourites also. For my own part I knew all of them
by heart. I felt even disappointed when he resumed the thread of his
narrative. Whenever he spoke of something whose beauty had until
then remained hidden from me, of pine-forests or of hailstorms, of
_Notre-Dame de Paris_, of _Athalie_, or of _Phedre_, by some piece
of imagery he would make their beauty explode and drench me with its
essence. And so, dimly realising that the universe contained innumerable
elements which my feeble senses would be powerless to discern, did he
not bring them within my reach, I wished that I might have his opinion,
some metaphor of his, upon everything in the world, and especially upon
such things as I might have an opportunity, some day, of seeing for
myself; and among such things, more particularly still upon some of the
historic buildings of France, upon certain views of the sea, because the
emphasis with which, in his books, he referred to these shewed that he
regarded them as rich in significance and beauty. But, alas, upon almost
everything in the world his opinion was unknown to me. I had no doubt
that it would differ entirely from my own, since his came down from an
unknown sphere towards which I was striving to raise myself; convinced
that my thoughts would have seemed pure foolishness to that perfected
spirit, I had so completely obliterated them all that, if I happened to
find in one of his books something which had already occurred to my own
mind, my heart would swell with gratitude and pride as though some deity
had, in his infinite bounty, restored it to me, had pronounced it to be
beautiful and right. It happened now and then