How little account does
passion take of goodness! It is not within the cycle of its revolution:
it is below; it is tamer; it is older; it wears no wings.
And your proud heart flashing back to the memory of that sparkling eye
which lighted your hope--full-fed upon the vanities of cloister
learning, drives your soberer visions to the wind. As you recall those
tones, so full of brilliancy and pride, the quiet virtues fade, like the
soft haze upon a spring landscape driven westward by a swift, sea-born
storm. The pulse bounds; the eyes flash; the heart trembles with its
sharp springs. Hope dilates, like the eye, fed with swift blood leaping
to the brain.
Again the image of Miss Dalton, so fine, so noble, so womanly, fills and
bounds the Future. The lingering tears of grief drop away from your eye,
as the lingering loves of boyhood drop from your scalding passion, or
drip into clouds of vapor.
You listen to the calm, thoughtful advice of the father, with a deep
consciousness of something stronger than his counsels seething in your
bosom. The words of caution, of instruction, of guidance, fall upon your
heated imagination like the night-dews upon the crater of an AEtna.
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