would soon be in the hands of the London publishers, his heart
swelled with a growing and irrepressible sense of pride. For he
knew and felt--with an undefinable yet positive certainty--that
however much the public or the critics might gainsay him, his fame
as a poet of the very highest order would ere long be asserted and
assured. A deep tranquillity was in his soul ... a tranquillity
that seemed to increase the further he went onward,--the restless
weariness that had once possessed him was past, and a vaguely
sweet content pervade his being like the odor of early roses
pervading warm air ... he felt, he hoped, he loved! ... and yet
his feelings, hopes, and longings turned to something altogether
undeclared and indefinite, as softly dim and distant as the first
faint white cloud-signal wafted from the moon in heaven, when, on
the point of rising, she makes her queenly purpose known to her
waiting star-attendants.

Practically considered, his journey was tedious and for the most
part dull and uninteresting. In these Satan-like days of "going to
and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it" travelling has
lost much of its old romantic charm, . . the idea of traversing long
distances no more fills the expectant adventurer with a
pleasurable sense of uncertainty and mystery--he knows exactly
what to anticipate.. it is all laid out for him plainly on the
level lines of the commonplace, and nothing is left to his
imagination. The Continent of Europe has been ransacked from end
to end by tourists who have turned it into a sort of exhausted
pleasure-garden, whereof the various entertainments are too
familiarly known to arouse any fresh curiosity,--the East is
nearly in the same condition,--hordes of British and American
sight-seers scamper over the empire-strewn soil of Persia and