form as a book, would be a dialogue according to the true Attic
genius, full of those diversions, passing irritations, unlooked-for
appeals, in which a solicitous missionary finds his largest range of
opportunity, and takes even dull wits unaware. In Bruno, that
abstract theory of the perpetual motion of the world was become a
visible person talking with you.

And as the runaway Dominican was still in temper a monk, so he
presented himself to his audience in the comely Dominican habit. The
reproachful eyes were to-day for the most part kindly observant,
registering every detail of that singular company, all the
physiognomic effects which come, by the way, on people, and, through
them, on things,--the "shadows of ideas" in men's faces--his own
pleasantly expressive with them, in turn. De Umbris Idearum: it was
the very title of his discourse. There was "heroic gaiety" there:
only, as usual with gaiety, it made the passage of a peevish cloud
seem all the chillier. Lit up, in the agitation of speaking, by many
a harsh or scornful beam, yet always sinking, in moments of repose,
to an [156] expression of high-bred melancholy, the face was one that
looked, after all, made for suffering,--already half pleading, half
defiant, as of a creature you could hurt, but to the last never shake
a hair's-breadth from its estimate of yourself.

Like nature, like nature in that opulent country of his birth which
the "Nolan," as he delighted to call himself, loved so well that,
born wanderer as he was, he must perforce return thither sooner or
later at the risk of life, he gave plenis manibus, but without
selection, and was hardly more fastidious in speech than the
"asinine" vulgar he so deeply contemned. His rank, un-weeded
eloquence, abounding in play of words, rabbinic allegories, verses