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In the Orlando Innamorato, Malagigi, the necromancer,
puts all the company to sleep by reading
to them from a book. Some books have this power
of themselves and need no necromancer. Fearing,
gentle reader, that mine may be of this kind,
I have provided these introductory chapters, from
time to time, like stalls or Misereres in a church,
with flowery canopies and poppy-heads over them,
where thou mayest sit down and sleep.

No,—the figure is not a bad one. This book
does somewhat resemble a minster, in the Romanesque
style, with pinnacles, and flying buttresses,
and roofs,

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“Gargoyled with greyhounds, and with many lions
Made of fine gold, with divers sundry dragons.”
You step into its shade and coolness out of the hot
streets of life; a mysterious light streams through
the painted glass of the marigold windows, staining
the cusps and crumpled leaves of the window-shafts,
and the cherubs and holy-water-stoups below.
Here and there is an image of the Virgin
Mary; and other images, “in divers vestures,
called weepers, stand in housings made about the
tomb”; and, above all, swells the vast dome of
heaven, with its star-mouldings, and the flaming
constellations, like the mosaics in the dome of St.
Peter's. Have you not heard funeral psalms from
the chauntry? Have you not heard the sound of
church-bells, as I promised; mysterious sounds
from the Past and Future, as from the belfries outside
the cathedral; even such a mournful, mellow,
watery peal of bells, as is heard sometimes at sea,
from cities afar off below the horizon?

I know not how this Romanesque, and at times
flamboyant, style of architecture may please the

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critics. They may wish, perhaps, that I had omitted
some of my many ornaments, my arabesques,
and roses, and fantastic spouts, and Holy-Roods
and Gallilee-steeples. But would it then have
been Romanesque?

But perhaps, gentle reader, thou art one of
those, who think the days of Romance gone forever.
Believe it not! O, believe it not! Thou
hast at this moment in thy heart as sweet a romance
as was ever written. Thou art not less a
woman, because thou dost not sit aloft in a tower,
with a tassel-gentle on thy wrist! Thou art not
less a man, because thou wearest no hauberk, nor
mail-sark, and goest not on horseback after foolish
adventures! Nay, nay! Every one has a Romance
in his own heart. All that has blessed or
awed the world lies there; and

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Sooner or later some passages of every one's
romance must be written, either in words or actions.
They will proclaim the truth; for Truth is
thought, which has assumed its appropriate garments,
either of words or actions; while Falsehood
is thought, which, disguised in words or actions
not its own, comes before the blind old
world, as Jacob came before the patriarch Isaac,
clothed in the goodly raiment of his brother
Esau. And the world, like the patriarch, is often
deceived; for, though the voice is Jacob's voice,
yet the hands are the hands of Esau, and the
False takes away the birth-right and the blessing
from the True. Hence it is, that the world so
often lifts up its voice and weeps.

That very pleasing and fanciful Chinese Romance,
the Shadow in the Water, ends with the
hero's marrying both the heroines. I hope my
gentle reader feels curious to know the end of
this Romance, which is a shadow upon the earth;
and see whether there be any marriage at all
in it.

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That is the very point I am now thinking of, as
I sit here at my pleasant chamber window, and
enjoy the balmy air of a bright summer morning,
and watch the motions of the golden robin, that
sits on its swinging nest on the outermost, pendulous
branch of yonder elm. The broad meadows
and the steel-blue river remind me of the meadows
of Unterseen, and the river Aar; and beyond
them rise magnificent snow-white clouds, piled up
like Alps. Thus the shades of Washington and
William Tell seem to walk together on these
Elysian Fields; for it was here, that in days
long gone, our great Patriot dwelt; and yonder
clouds so much resemble the snowy Alps, that
they remind me irresistibly of the Swiss. Noble
examples of a high purpose and a fixed will! Do
they not move, Hyperion-like on high? Were
they not, likewise, sons of Heaven and Earth?

Nothing can be more lovely than these summer
mornings; nor than the southern window at which
I sit and write, in this old mansion, which is like
an Italian Villa. But O, this lassitude,—this

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weariness,—when all around me is so bright! I
have this morning a singular longing for flowers;
a wish to stroll among the roses and carnations,
and inhale their breath, as if it would revive me.
I wish I knew the man, who called flowers
“the fugitive poetry of Nature.” From this distance,
from these scholastic shades,—from this
leafy, blossoming, and beautiful Cambridge, I
stretch forth my hand to grasp his, as the hand of
a poet!—Yes; this morning I would rather stroll
with him among the gay flowers, than sit here and
write. I feel so weary!

Old men with their staves, says the Spanish
poet, are ever knocking at the door of the grave.
But I am not old. The Spanish poet might have
included the young also.—No matter! Courage,
and forward! The Romance must be finished;
and finished soon.

O thou poor authorling! Reach a little deeper
into the human heart! Touch those strings,—
touch those deeper strings, and more boldly, or
the notes will die away like whispers, and no ear

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shall hear them, save thine own! And, to cheer
thy solitary labor, remember, that the secret studies
of an author are the sunken piers upon which is
to rest the bridge of his fame, spanning the dark
waters of Oblivion. They are out of sight; but
without them no superstructure can stand secure!

And now, Reader, since the sermon is over,
and we are still sitting here in this Miserere, let us
read aloud a page from the old parchment manuscript
on the lettern before us; let us sing it
through these dusky aisles, like a Gregorian Chant,
and startle the sleeping congregation!

“I have read of the great river Euripus, which
ebbeth and floweth seven times a day, and with
such violence, that it carrieth ships upon it with
full sail, directly against the wind. Seven times
in an hour ebbeth and floweth rash opinion, in the
torrent of indiscreet and troublesome apprehensions;
carrying critic calumny and squint-eyed detraction
mainly against the wind of wisdom and
judgment.”

In secula seculorum! Amen!

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