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that the iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue warm. I saw many a gallant heart, which
seemed to me brave and loyal as the crusaders sent by genuine and noble faith to Syria
and the sepulchre, pursuing, through days and nights, and a long life of devotion, the
hope of lighting at least a smile in the cold eyes, if not a fire in the icy heart. I watched
the earnest, enthusiastic sacrifice. I saw the pure resolve, the generous faith, the fine
scorn of doubt, the impatience of suspicion. I watched the grace, the ardor, the glory of
devotion. Through those strange spectacles how often I saw the noblest heart renouncing
all other hope, all other ambition, all other life, than the possible love of some one of
those statues. Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not the love to give. The Parian face
was so polished and smooth, because there was no sorrow upon the heart,--and, drearily
often, no heart to be touched. I could not wonder that the noble heart of devotion was
broken, for it had dashed itself against a stone. I wept, until my spectacles were dimmed
for that hopeless sorrow; but there was a pang beyond tears for those icy statues.
"Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in knowledge,--I did not comprehend the sights I
was compelled to see. I used to tear my glasses away from my eyes, and, frightened at
myself, run to escape my own consciousness. Reaching the small house where we then
lived, I plunged into my grandmother's room and, throwing myself upon the floor, buried
my face in her lap; and sobbed myself to sleep with premature grief. But when I
awakened, and felt her cool hand upon my hot forehead, and heard the low, sweet song,
or the gentle story, or the tenderly told parable from the Bible, with which she tried to
soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to
steal a glance at her through the spectacles.
"Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare and pensive beauty. Upon the tranquil little
islands her life had been eventless, and all the fine possibilities of her nature were like
flowers that never bloomed. Placid were all her years; yet I have read of no heroine, of no
woman great in sudden crises, that it did not seem to me she might have been. The wife
and widow of a man who loved his own home better than the homes of others, I have yet
heard of no queen, no belle, no imperial beauty, whom in grace, and brilliancy, and
persuasive courtesy, she might not have surpassed.
"Madam," said Titbottom to my wife, whose heart hung upon his story; "your husband's
young friend, Aurelia, wears sometimes a camelia in her hair, and no diamond in the ball-
room seems so costly as that perfect flower, which women envy, and for whose least and
withered petal men sigh; yet, in the tropical solitudes of Brazil, how many a camelia bud
drops from a bush that no eye has ever seen, which, had it flowered and been noticed,
would have gilded all hearts with its memory.
"When I stole these furtive glances at my grandmother, half fearing that they were wrong,
I saw only a calm lake, whose shores were low, and over which the sky hung unbroken,
so that the least star was clearly reflected. It had an atmosphere of solemn twilight
tranquillity, and so completely did its unruffled surface blend with the cloudless, star-
studded sky, that, when I looked through my spectacles at my grandmother, the vision
seemed to me all heaven and stars. Yet, as I gazed and gazed, I felt what stately cities
might well have been built upon those shores, and have flashed prosperity over the calm,
like coruscations of pearls.
"I dreamed of gorgeous fleets, silken sailed and blown by perfumed winds, drifting over
those depthless waters and through those spacious skies. I gazed upon the twilight, the
inscrutable silence, like a God-fearing discoverer upon a new, and vast, and dim sea,
bursting upon him through forest glooms, and in the fervor of whose impassioned gaze, a
millennial and poetic world arises, and man need no longer die to be happy.
"My companions naturally deserted me, for I had grown wearily grave and abstracted:
and, unable to resist the allurement of my spectacles, I was constantly lost in a world, of
which those companions were part, yet of which they knew nothing. I grew cold and
hard, almost morose; people seemed to me blind and unreasonable. They did the wrong
thing. They called green, yellow; and black, white. Young men said of a girl, 'What a
lovely, simple creature!' I looked, and there was only a glistening wisp of straw, dry and
hollow. Or they said, 'What a cold, proud beauty!' I looked, and lo! a Madonna, whose
heart held the world. Or they said, 'What a wild, giddy girl!' and I saw a glancing,
dancing mountain stream, pure as the virgin snows whence it flowed, singing through sun
and shade, over pearls and gold dust, slipping along unstained by weed, or rain, or heavy
foot of cattle, touching the flowers with a dewy kiss,--a beam of grace, a happy song, a
line of light, in the dim and troubled landscape.
"My grandmother sent me to school, but I looked at the master, and saw that he was a
smooth, round ferule--or an improper noun--or a vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him.
Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one
was a well of cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars. He gave
me all my schooling. With him I used to walk by the sea, and, as we strolled and the
waves plunged in long legions before us, I looked at him through the spectacles, and as
his eye dilated with the boundless view, and his chest heaved with an impossible desire, I
saw Xerxes and his army tossing and glittering, rank upon rank, multitude upon
multitude, out of sight, but ever regularly advancing and with the confused roar of
ceaseless music, prostrating themselves in abject homage. Or, as with arms outstretched
and hair streaming on the wind, he chanted full lines of the resounding Iliad, I saw Homer
pacing the AEgean sands in the Greek sunsets of forgotten times.
"My grandmother died, and I was thrown into the world without resources, and with no
capital but my spectacles. I tried to find employment, but men were shy of me. There was
a vague suspicion that I was either a little crazed, or a good deal in league with the Prince
of Darkness. My companions who would persist in calling a piece of painted muslin a fair
and fragrant flower had no difficulty; success waited for them around every corner, and
arrived in every ship. I tried to teach, for I loved children. But if anything excited my
suspicion, and, putting on my spectacles, I saw that I was fondling a snake, or smelling at
a bud with a worm in it, I sprang up in horror and ran away; or, if it seemed to me
through the glasses that a cherub smiled upon me, or a rose was blooming in my
buttonhole, then I felt myself imperfect and impure, not fit to be leading and training
what was so essentially superior in quality to myself, and I kissed the children and left
them weeping and wondering.
"In despair I went to a great merchant on the island, and asked him to employ me.
"'My young friend,' said he, 'I understand that you have some singular secret, some
charm, or spell, or gift, or something, I don't know what, of which people are afraid.
Now, you know, my dear,' said the merchant, swelling up, and apparently prouder of his
great stomach than of his large fortune, 'I am not of that kind. I am not easily frightened.
You may spare yourself the pain of trying to impose upon me. People who propose to
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