But it is not the brilliance of occasional parts and passages alone, which justifies us in pronouncing the "Roman" an extraordinary production. We look at it as a whole, and thus regarding it, we find--first, a wondrous freedom from faults, major or minor, juvenile or non-juvenile; wondrous, inasmuch as the author is still very young, not many years, indeed, in advance of his majority. There is exaggeration, we grant, in passages, but it is exaggeration as essential to the circumstances and the characters as Lear's insane language is to his madness, or Othello's turbid tide of figures to his jealousy. The hero--an enthusiast--speaks always in enthusiastic terms; but of extravagance we find little, and of absurdity or affectation none. Diffusion there is, but it is often the beautiful diffusion of one who dallies with beloved thoughts, and will not let them go till they have told him all that is in their heart. And ever and anon we meet with strong single lines and separate sentences, containing truth and fancy concentrated as "lion's marrow." Take a few specimens. Of Italy he says: "She wraps the purple round her outraged breast, And even in fetters cannot be a slave." Again, she "Stands menacled before the world, and bears Two hemispheres--innumerable wrongs, Illimitable glories." "The soul never Can twice be virgin--the eye that strikes Upon the hidden path to the unseen Is henceforth for two worlds." "To both worlds --The inner and the outer--we come naked, The very noblest heart on earth, hath oft No better lot than _to deserve_." "Before every man the world of beauty, Like a great artist, standeth night and day With patient hand retouching in the heart God's defaced image." "Rude heaps that had been cities clad the ground With history." "Strange fragments Of forms once held divine, and still, _like angels_, _Immortal every where_." "The poet, In some rapt moment of intense attendance, The skies being genial, and the earthly air Propitious, catches on the inward ear The awful and unutterable meanings Of a divine soliloquy." "The very stars themselves are nearer to us than to-morrow." "The great man ... is set Among us pigmies, with a heavenlier stature, And brighter face than ours, that we must _leap_ _Even to smite it._" "Great merchants, men Who dealt in kingdoms; ruddy aruspex, And pale philosopher, who bent beneath The keys of wisdom." "The Coliseum ... stood out dark With thoughts of ages: like some mighty captive Upon his death-bed in a Christian land, And lying, through the chant of Psalm and Creed Unshriven and stern, with peace upon his brow, And on his lips strange gods."