“An elk came out of the pine-forest; He snuffed up east, he snuffed up west, Stealthy and still; His mane and his horns were shaggy with snow, I laid my arrow across my bow, Stealthily and still; The bowstring rattled—the arrow flew, And it pierced his blade-bone through and through, Hurrah! I sprang at his throat like a wolf of the wood, And I dipped my hands in the smoking blood, Hurrah!” Kingsley had not written _Hypatia_ then. Kingsley never went moose-hunting in his life. How could he so vividly describe the gait and bearing of a forest elk stalking warily, doubtfully, yet with a kingly pride through his wintry haunts? Probably from the instinctive sense of fitness, the intuition peculiar to poets, that enabled him to feel alike with a fierce Goth sheltering in his snow-trench, and a soft, seductive southern beauty, languishing, lovely and beloved, in spite of dangerous impulses and tarnished fame, in spite of wilful heart, reckless self-abandonment, woman weakness, and the fatal saffron shawl. I tell you that I could not have been more completely alone in Robinson Crusoe’s island than I found myself here within a rifle-shot of Kensington Palace, during a twenty minutes’ walk, to and fro, up and down, threading the stems of those tall, metropolitan trees; nor when my solitude was at last disturbed could I find it in me to grudge the intruders their share of my retreat. More especially as they were themselves thoroughly unconscious of everything but their own companionship, sauntering on, side by side, with murmured words, and loving looks, and steps that dwelt and lingered on the path, because impossible roses seemed springing into bloom beneath their very feet, and that for them Kensington Gardens were indeed as the gardens of Paradise. I knew right well for _me_ the mist was gathering round, ghostly and damp and chill. It struck through my garments, it crept about my heart, but for these, thank God! the sky was bright as a midsummer noon. They were basking in the warmth and light of those gleams that come once or twice in a lifetime to remind us of what we might be, to reproach us, perhaps, gently for what we are. They did not speak much, they laughed not at all. Their conversation seemed a little dull, trite, and commonplace, yet I doubt if either of them has forgotten a word of it yet. It was pleasant to observe how happy they were, and I am sure they thought it was to last for ever. Indeed I wish it may! But the reflections of a man on foot are to those of a man on horseback as the tortoise to the hare, the mouse to the lion, tobacco to opium, chalk to cheese, prose to poetry. “As moonshine is to sunshine, and as water is to wine.”