who unloose our tongues, and we speak; who anoint our eyes, and we
see? We say things we never thought to have said; for once, our walls
of habitual reserve vanished, and left us at large; we were children
playing with children in a wide field of flowers. Steep us, we cried,
in these influences, for days, for weeks, and we shall be sunny poets,
and will write out in many-colored words the romance that you are. Was
it Hafiz[445] or Firdousi[446] that said of his Persian Lilla, "She
was an elemental force, and astonished me by her amount of life, when
I saw her day after day radiating, every instant, redundant joy and
grace on all around her.[447] She was a solvent powerful to reconcile
all heterogeneous persons into one society; like air or water, an
element of such a great range of affinities, that it combines readily
with a thousand substances. Where she is present, all others will be
more than they are wont. She was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever
she did, became her. She had too much sympathy and desire to please,
than that you could say, her manners were marked with dignity, yet no
princess could surpass her clear and erect demeanor on each occasion.
She did not study the Persian grammar, nor the books of the seven
poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed to be written upon her.
For, though the bias of her nature was not to thought, but to
sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to meet
intellectual persons by the fullness of her heart, warming them by her
sentiments; believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all
would show themselves noble."

21. I know that this Byzantine[448] pile of chivalry of Fashion, which
seems so fair and picturesque to those who look at the contemporary
facts for science or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all
spectators. The constitution of our society makes it a giant's castle
to the ambitious youth who have not found their names enrolled in its