ardor, the glory of devotion. Through those strange spectacles how
often I saw the noblest heart renouncing all other hope, all other
ambition, all other life, than the possible love of some one of those
statues.

"Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not the love to give. The face
was so polished and smooth, because there was no sorrow in the
heart,--and drearily, often, no heart to be touched. I could not
wonder that the noble heart of devotion was broken, for it had dashed
itself against a stone. I wept, until my spectacles were dimmed, for
those hopeless lovers; but there was a pang beyond tears for those icy
statues.

"Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in knowledge,--I did not
comprehend the sights I was compelled to see. I used to tear my
glasses away from my eyes, and, frightened at myself, run to escape my
own consciousness. Reaching the small house where we then lived, I
plunged into my grandmother's room, and, throwing myself upon the
floor, buried my face in her lap; and sobbed myself to sleep with
premature grief.

"But when I awakened, and felt her cool hand upon my hot forehead, and
heard the low sweet song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly told
parable from the Bible, with which she tried to soothe me, I could not
resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to
steal a glance at her through the spectacles.

"Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare and pensive beauty. Upon
the tranquil little islands her life had been eventless, and all the
fine possibilities of her nature were like flowers that never