A person with deficient ideality is necessarily imprisoned by the present. Unable to portray for themselves a presentment of unaccustomed conditions on the mental canvas, such as is traced by Fancy, coloured by Hope, yet corrected by Prudence, they are wholly precluded from the prevision, even in part, of the living wonders, the breathing enchantments, of the future. To them no city of rest, glorious and beautiful, arises from the dull vulgarities of life and endeavour; all with them is of the earth, earthy. A gospel of hard-eyed economy, grudging gain, unrelieved toil, for the poor; for the sordid aspirant, by endless thrift and striving, ‘property, property, property;’ for the rich, a message of selfish enjoyment, grasping monopoly, ungenial ease. ‘Such would the world be were the human mind divested of the sublime attributes of Faith and Imagination!’ exclaimed Ernest, borne away from his present cares. ‘There may be perils for the glad mariner on the sun-bright, flashing wave; but he has the possible glory of descrying purple isles, undiscovered continents. Dying, he falls as a hero; living, he may survive to be hailed as the world’s benefactor.’ Much comforted by these bright-hued imaginings and illuminings of the path in which he knew himself to be an ardent traveller, Mr. Neuchamp awaited his mail-bag with more than usual serenity. CHAPTER XXVI The untoward season had not been without its effect upon the thousand and one gardens that paint, in each vivid delicate hue, with flower tracery and plant glory, the rocky steeps and fairy nooks which engirdle Sydney. The undulating lawns were dimmer, the plant masses less profuse, the showery blooms less dazzling, the trailers less gorgeous, than in other years. Yet were not the shores of the fair, wondrous haven, beloved by Ocean for many a long-past æon of lonely joy, before the bold scion of a sea-roving race invaded its giant portals, without some tokens of his favour. In the long, throbbing, burning days, when the sun beat blistering upon the heated roof, the white pavement, the dusty streets, he summoned from beyond the misty blue horizon the rushing wind-sisters fresh from the ice-galleries, the snow-peaks, the frozen colonnades of that lone land where sits enthroned in dazzling splendour, during days that die not or nights that never end, the sorceress of the Southern Pole. From their wings, frost-jewelled, dripped gentlest showers, refreshing the shore, though they passed not the great mountain range which so long guarded the hidden treasure-lands of the central waste. Hot and parched, compared with former seasons, the autumn seemed endless, yet were the gardens and shrubberies of Morahmee so comparatively verdant and fresh, from their proximity to the sea, that Ernest would have hailed it as an Eden of greenest glory, in comparison with the ‘sun-scorched desert brown and bare’ which Rainbar had long resembled.