cheek and eyes cast down, while she listened to his whispers, whose voice was softer and sweeter than fairy music in her ears! Could she but have known then where to seek her happiness and find it! Alas! that we see things so differently in different lights and surroundings—in serge and velvet, in the lustre of revelry and the pale cold grey of dawn, in black December frosts and the rich glow of June. Alas! for us, that so seldom till too late to take our bearings, and avoid impending shipwreck, can we make use of that fearful gift described by another great poet as
"The telescope of truth,
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near, in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!"
but still reality, and, as such, preferable to all the baseless visions of fancy, all the glitter and glamour and illusion of romance.
