I sat down upon the ivy-covered wall of a high dilapidated terrace which overlooked the lake. My eyes wandered over the bright expanse of water and the luminous immensity of the sky; they were so well blended in the azure line of the horizon that it would have been impossible to define where the sky commenced, and where the lake terminated. I seemed to float in the pure ether, or to be merged in a universal ocean. But the inward joy which inundated my soul was far more infinite, radiant, and incommensurate, than the atmosphere with which I seemed to mingle. I could not have defined my joy, or rather my inward serenity. It was as some unfathomable secret revealed to me by feelings instead of words,--as the sensation of the eye passing from darkness into light, or as the rapture of some mystical soul, secure in the possession of its God. It was dazzling light, intoxication without giddiness, repose without heaviness, or immobility. I could have lived on thus during as many thousand years as there were ripples on the lake, or sands upon its shores, without perceiving that more seconds had elapsed than were required for a single respiration. When the immortal dwellers in heaven first lose the consciousness of the duration of time, they must feel thus; it was an immutable thought, in the eternity of an instant. XVI. These sensations were not precise, or definable. They were too complete to be scanned; thought could not divide, nor reflection analyze them. They did not take their rise in the loveliness of the superhuman creature that I adored, for the shadow of death still lay between her beauty and my eyes; or in the pride of being loved by her, for I knew not if I was more in her sight than a dream of morning; or in the hope of possessing her charms, for my respect was too far above such vile gratifications of the senses even to stoop to them in thought; or in the satisfaction of displaying my triumph, for selfish vanity held no place in my heart, and I knew no one in that secluded spot before whom I could profane my love by disclosing it; or in the hope of linking her fate with mine, for I knew she was another's; or in the certainty of seeing her, and the happiness of following her steps, for I was as little free as she was, and in a few days fate was to divide us; nor, lastly, in the certainty of being beloved, for I knew nothing of her heart, except the one word and look of gratitude that she had addressed to me. Mine was another feeling; pure, calm, disinterested, and immaterial. It was repose of the heart, after having met with the long sought-for, and till then unfound, object of its restless adoration; the long-desired idol of that vague, unquiet adoration of supreme beauty which agitates the soul until the divinity has been discovered, and that our heart has clung to as a straw to the magnet, or mingled with as sighs with the surrounding air.