hanging over me, with the light gone out of life,
and the prospect unutterably dreary ; and yet the strange spirit has been with me, so that a strain of music should have power to affect me to tears, and the delicate petals of the very funeral wreaths should draw me into a rapturous contempla- tion of their fresh curves, their lovely. intricacy, their pene- trating fragrance. In such a moment one could find it in
one's heart to believe that some ethereal soulless creature, like Ariel of the Tempest, was floating at one's side, directing one's attention, like a petulant child, to the things that touched its light-hearted fancy, and constraining one into an unsought enjoyment." The delight, however, is evanescent, and can no more be induced than got rid of. But, he goes on, "it is this very evanescent quality which gives me a certain sense of security." In reading the Lives of men like Rossetti, Pater, and J. A. Symonds the writer in the Cornhill sees that they ran the risk of regarding the pursuit of such sensations the one object and business of their existence, and were in danger of making of the soul "nothing but a delicate instrument for registering aesthetic perceptions." Nevertheless, he gives to these sensations a very great value. "I have felt in such moments as if I were on the verge of grasping some momentous secret, as if only the thinnest of veils hung between me and some knowledge that would set my whole life and being on a different plane. But the moment passes, and the secret delays."
Previous page
