from the deficiencies of language adequate to their incorporation and expression-though Speech to him was like a deep-toned shell,* struck by a prophet's hand; he was omnipotent over numbers. But the mean mind in motion is still meaner when it records that motion. Language and speech may communicate much that stirs within; they may interpret ideas whose outlines are defined-conceptions which dwell within compass: but when the imagination hurries into the far depths of a starry sky, or dives into the stirless mysteries of its own being, or rises in conjecture to the sphere of its ultimate destiny-then Thought is lost in the chaos of its own creations. For speech, potent prerogative as it is, hath no part in the subtler and intenser emotions which prevail, when the soul holdeth holy-day beyond the barriers of earth, and feels (heavenliest perception!) its affinity with a kingdom and kindred higher and holier than itself. But this rare, stirring sense of royalty has no audible articulation, nor may the after-mind, subdued and sunken, translate its visionary creation:-all that survives the deluge of divine light is known but as the shadowy phantasms of a dream-as a bright and beautiful illusion, which a breath destroyed! * Gray's Ode-The Death of Hoel. CHAPTER VII. THE ELDER AT HIS BIRTHPLACE. "SPIRIT-STIRRING THOMAS CARLYLE has fancifully balanced our Indian Empire against our WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.-Of course his loyal heart heaved the Empire aboon the beam. Descending from Men to Words, which could we Englanders best dispense with our Colonies, or the word HOME?"-E. In the month of September in every year invariably, the Old Man, winsome Lady! with whom thou hast thus far borne, was wont to abandon Ivy Lodge, and, during the presidency-in-chief of the harvest-moon, to sojourn at the place of his birth: occasionally also in merry May his salutary face was turned thitherwards. Attendant on "these accustomed annual rounds," there were "partings" at the Lodge, not by any means "sudden," or of that romantic fervency which a bold poetic figure describes as pressing the heart's life out, but full enough of pathos to dim the Elder's eye. E. accounted for such emotions, and justified what sterner systems of flesh and blood might designate as weakness or effeminacy, by the argument that these autumnal visitations were made in serious rather than in holiday meaning; that Time, with seemingly-increasing celerity, was conducting him into close proximity with that critical withdrawing-gate by which all Earth's human company retire, after visits varying in duration, but by authoritative premonition announced and by accumulating evidence approved to terminate about the threescore-and-tenth year, elude as we may the fatal beck of humankind's gaunt Scene-shifter; and that when, as the ancient of years, he returned to the spot from whence was dated his beginning of days, he moved, though not with heavy heart, " as though his steps were tow'rds a tomb," for when his little life should be rounded by its second sleep, it was there, in his own familiar sod, that he desired to be laid down. Of the Elder's feathered dependents two especial favorites, the Queen Dowager and Sir Fred, were chosen to accompany him into country quarters, a measure adopted not so much from E.'s passion for music as to avert their self-inflicted martyrdom in the cause of abstinency-a suicidal zeal in which, or |