And still was Lucilla Volktman a stranger to all that savoured of the world; the company of others of her sex and age never drew forth her emotions from their resting-place:-- “And Nature said, a lovelier flower On earth was never sown * * * * * Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse; and with me The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain. The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place; Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty, born of murmuring sound, Shall pass into her face.” WORDSWORTH. These lines have occurred to me again and again, as I looked on the face of her to whom I have applied them. And, remembering as I do its radiance and glory in her happier moments, I can scarcely persuade myself to notice the faults and heats of temper which at times dashed away all its lustre and gladness. Unrestrained and fervid, she gave way to the irritation of grief of the moment with a violence that would have terrified any one who beheld her at such times. But it rarely happened that the scene had its witness even in her father, for she fled to the loneliest spot she could find to indulge these emotions; and perhaps even the agony they occasioned--an agony convulsing the heart and whole of her impassioned frame--took a sort of luxury from the solitary and unchecked nature of its indulgence. Volktman continued his pursuits with an ardour that increased--as do all species of monomania--with increasing years; and in the accidental truth of some of his predictions, he forgot the erroneous result of the rest. He corresponded at times with the Englishman, who, after a short sojourn in England, had returned to the Continent, and was now making a prolonged tour through its northern capitals. Very different, indeed, from the astrologer’s occupations were those of the wanderer; and time, dissipation, and a maturer intellect had cured the latter of his boyish tendency to studies so idle and so vain. Yet he always looked back with an undefined and unconquered interest to the period of his acquaintance with the astrologer; to their long and thrilling watches in the night season; to the contagious fervour of faith breathing from the visionary; his dark and restless excursions into that remote science associated with the legends of eldest time, and of “The crew, who, under names of old renown, Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train, With monstrous shapes and sorceries, abused Fanatic Egypt and her priests.”