I shall never recite another finest descriptive passage from the whole range of our British Poets--during the course of my life--in this Pavilion. NORTH. Let us look at the Temple. TALBOYS. Be done, I beseech you, sir. NORTH. Talboys, you have as logical--as legal a head as any man I know. TALBOYS. What has a logical or legal head to do with Byron's description of the Clitumnus? NORTH. As much as with any other "Process." And you know it. But you are in a most contradictory--I had almost said captious mood, this forenoon--and will not imbibe genially---- TALBOYS. Imbibe genially--acids--after having imbibed in the body immeasurable rain. NORTH. Let us look at the Temple. "A Temple still" might mean a still temple. TALBOYS. But it doesn't. NORTH. A Poet's meaning should never, through awkwardness, be ambiguous. But no more of that. "Keeps its Memory of Thee" suggests to my mind that the Temple, dedicated of old to the River-God, retains, under the new religion of the land, evidence of the old Deification and Worship. The Temple survives to express to us of another day and faith, a Deification and worship of Thee--Clitumnus--dictated by the same apprehension of thy characteristic Beauty in the hearts of those old worshippers that now possesses ours looking on Thee. Thou art unchanged--the sensitive and imaginative intelligence of Thee in man is unchanged--although times have changed--states, nations--and, to the eyes of man, the heavens themselves! If all this be meant--all this is not said--in the words you admire. TALBOYS. I cannot say, as an honest man, that I distinctly understand you, my dear sir. NORTH. You understand me better than you understand Byron. TALBOYS. I understand neither of you. NORTH. The poetical thought seems to be here--that the Temple rises up spontaneously on the bank--under the power of the Beautiful in the river--a permanent self-sprung reflexion of _that_ Beautiful--as indeed, to imagination, all things appear to create themselves! TALBOYS. You speak like yourself now, sir. NORTH. But look here, my good Talboys. The statue of Achilles may "keep its memory"--granting the locution to be good, which it is not--of Achilles--for Achilles is no more. Sink--in a rapture of thought--the hand of the artist--think that the statues of Achilles _came of themselves_--as unsown flowers come--for poets to express to all ages the departed Achilles. They keep--as long as they remain unperished--"their memory of Achilles"--they were from the beginning voluntary and intentional conservators of the Memory of the Hero. But _Clitumnus is here_--alive to this hour, and with every prospect of outliving his own Temple. What do you say to that? TALBOYS. To what? NORTH.