FAR ABOVE RUBIES

BY GEORGE MACDONALD






Hector Macintosh was a young man about five-and-twenty, who, with the
proclivities of the Celt, inherited also some of the consequent
disabilities, as well as some that were accidental. Among the rest was
a strong tendency to regard only the ideal, and turn away from any
authority derived from an inferior source. His chief delight lay in the
attempt to embody, in what seemed to him the natural form of verse, the
thoughts in him constantly moving at least in the direction of the
ideal, even when he was most conscious of his inability to attain to the
utterance of them. But it was only in the retirement of his own chamber
that he attempted their embodiment; of all things, he shrank from any
communion whatever concerning these cherished matters. Nor, indeed, had
he any friends who could tempt him to share with them what seemed to him
his best; so that, in truth, he was intimate with none. His mind would
dwell much upon love and friendship in the imaginary abstract, but of
neither had he had the smallest immediate experience. He had cherished
only the ideals of the purest and highest sort of either passion, and
seemed to find satisfaction enough in the endeavor to embody such in
his verse, without even imagining himself in communication with any
visionary public. The era had not yet dawned when every scribbler is
consumed with the vain ambition of being recognized, not, indeed, as
what he is, but as what he pictures himself in his secret sessions of