the fire kindled, and the flame rose; for the blood is a stream that,
like burning rock-oil, at once kindles, and is itself the fuel. You can't
order these organic processes, any more than a milliner can make a rose.
She can make something that looks like a rose, more or less, but it takes
all the forces of the universe to finish and sweeten that blossom in your
button-hole; and you may be sure that when the orator's brain is in a
flame, when the poet's heart is in a tumult, it is something mightier
than he and his will that is dealing with him! As I have looked from one
of the northern windows of the street which commands our noble
estuary,--the view through which is a picture on an illimitable canvas
and a poem in innumerable cantos,--I have sometimes seen a pleasure-boat
drifting along, her sail flapping, and she seeming as if she had neither
will nor aim. At her stern a man was laboring to bring her head round
with an oar, to little purpose, as it seemed to those who watched him
pulling and tugging. But all at once the wind of heaven, which had
wandered all the way from Florida or from Labrador, it may be, struck
full upon the sail, and it swelled and rounded itself, like a white bosom
that had burst its bodice, and--

--You are right; it is too true! but how I love these pretty phrases! I
am afraid I am becoming an epicure in words, which is a bad thing to be,
unless it is dominated by something infinitely better than itself. But
there is a fascination in the mere sound of articulated breath; of
consonants that resist with the firmness of a maid of honor, or half or
wholly yield to the wooing lips; of vowels that flow and murmur, each
after its kind; the peremptory b and p, the brittle k, the vibrating r,
the insinuating s, the feathery f, the velvety v, the bell-voiced m, the
tranquil broad a, the penetrating e, the cooing u, the emotional o, and
the beautiful combinations of alternate rock and stream, as it were, that
they give to the rippling flow of speech,--there is a fascination in the