amidst its proudest triumphs, has a something trite and commonplace
compared with one of those vague intimations of a spiritual destiny which
are not within the ordinary domain of reason; and, gazing abstractedly
into space, will leave suspended some problem of severest thought, or
uncompleted some golden palace of imperial poetry, to indulge in hazy
reveries, that do not differ from those of an innocent, quiet child! The
soul has a long road to travel--from time through eternity. It demands
its halting hours of contemplation. Contemplation is serene. But with
such wants of an immortal immaterial spirit, Margrave had no fellowship,
no sympathy; and for myself, I need scarcely add that the lines I have
just traced I should not have written at the date at which my narrative
has now arrived.




CHAPTER XLIX.

I had no case that necessitated my return to L---- the following day. The
earlier hours of the forenoon I devoted to Strahan and his building plans.
Margrave flitted in and out of the room fitfully as an April sunbeam,
sometimes flinging himself on a sofa, and reading for a few minutes one of
the volumes of the ancient mystics, in which Sir Philip's library was so
rich. I remember it was a volume of Proclus. He read that crabbed and
difficult Greek with a fluency that surprised me. "I picked up the
ancient Greek," said he, "years ago, in learning the modern." But the
book soon tired him; then he would come and disturb us, archly enjoying
Strahan's peevishness at interruption; then he would throw open the window
and leap down, chanting one of his wild savage airs; and in another moment
he was half hid under the drooping boughs of a broad lime-tree, amidst the