238 THE DREAMER'S MISSION. 



dependent uplooking character of his affections, and the ab- 

 sence of all firm and self-sustaining power, would have formed 

 an exquisite combination in the character of a woman. But 

 to a man, whose whole life must either be a real conflict or a 

 gladiatorial contest, such qualities are but as fetters. Like wild 

 vines growing around a stately tree, they may add to its beauty, 

 but they waste and exhaust its strength. 



" Many are poets who have never penned 

 Their inspiration" 



and many a soul has been rilled with poetry, unuttered, 

 unexpressed, because the lips which should have breathed 

 it have never been " touched with a live coal from the altar." 

 'The mind of Horace was deeply imbued with poetry ; many 

 of the elements which commingle in the true poet were 

 his, but they lacked arrangement and congruity. His fancy 

 revelled in an ideal world, but he had no grasp of the real ; 

 and his beautiful dreams faded into vagueness, because he 

 lacked the power to clothe them in the garb of humanity. 

 To lie beneath the shadow of a spreading tree, and listen to 

 the murmur of a running stream, while his imagination drew 

 around him images of loveliness, as evanescent as they were 

 fair, — this was his happiness. In his love for his mother he 

 seemed to have exhausted his capacity for mere human affec- 

 tion, and when her death left him alone in a world of strangers, 

 he sought no sympathy, and indulged in no commune with 

 another soul. 



