failure of your hopes. For--in shame and sadness do I speak it,
Ernest--I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic
image.'

'And why?' asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. 'Are not those
thoughts divine?'

'They have a strain of the Divinity,' replied the poet. 'You can hear in
them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has
not corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have
been only dreams, because I have lived--and that, too, by my own choice
among poor and mean realities. Sometimes, even--shall I dare to say
it?---I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, which
my own works are said to have made more evident in nature and in human
life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope to
find me, in yonder image of the divine?'

The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise,
were those of Ernest.

At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was
to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open
air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went
along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with
a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the
pleasant foliage of many creeping plants that made a tapestry for the
naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a
small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure,
there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with
freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and