throughout, the possibility of some vision, as of a new city coming
down "like a bride out of heaven," a vision still indeed, it might
seem, a long way off, but to be granted perhaps one day to the eyes
thus trained, was presented as the motive of this laboriously
practical direction.

"If thou wouldst have all about thee like the colours of some fresh
picture, in a clear [33] light," so the discourse recommenced after a
pause, "be temperate in thy religious notions, in love, in wine, in
all things, and of a peaceful heart with thy fellows." To keep the
eye clear by a sort of exquisite personal alacrity and cleanliness,
extending even to his dwelling-place; to discriminate, ever more and
more fastidiously, select form and colour in things from what was
less select; to meditate much on beautiful visible objects, on
objects, more especially, connected with the period of youth--on
children at play in the morning, the trees in early spring, on young
animals, on the fashions and amusements of young men; to keep ever by
him if it were but a single choice flower, a graceful animal or sea-
shell, as a token and representative of the whole kingdom of such
things; to avoid jealously, in his way through the world, everything
repugnant to sight; and, should any circumstance tempt him to a
general converse in the range of such objects, to disentangle himself
from that circumstance at any cost of place, money, or opportunity;
such were in brief outline the duties recognised, the rights
demanded, in this new formula of life. And it was delivered with
conviction; as if the speaker verily saw into the recesses of the
mental and physical being of the listener, while his own expression
of perfect temperance had in it a fascinating power--the merely
negative element of purity, the mere freedom from taint or flaw, in
exercise [34] as a positive influence. Long afterwards, when Marius