"Now the Athenian dreamer builded better than he knew. That phantom which perpetually attends and perpetually evades us,--the inevitable guest whose silence maddens and whose sweetness consoles,--whose filmy radiance eclipses all beauty,--whose voiceless eloquence subdues all sound,--ever beckoning, ever inspiring, patient, pleading, and unchanging,--this is the Ideal which Plato called the dearer self, because, when its craving sympathies find reflex and response in a living form, its rapturous welcome ignores the old imperfect being, and the union only is recognized as Self indeed, complete and undivided. And that fulness of human love becomes a faint type and interpreter of the Infinite, as through it we glide into grander harmonies and enlarged relations with the Universe, urged on forever by insatiable desires and far-reaching aspirations which testify our celestial origin and intimate our immortal destiny. "'Lo! arm in arm, through every upward grade, From the rude Mongol to the starry Greek, everywhere we seek Union and bond, till in one sea sublime Of love be merged all measure and all time!" "I never disclosed in words my love to Blanche. Through the lucid transparency of Presence, I believed that she knew all and comprehended all, without the aid of those blundering symbols. We never even spoke of the future; for all time, past and to come, seemed to converge and centre and repose in that radiant present. In the enchantment of my new life, I feared lest a breath should disturb the spell, and send me back to darkness and solitude.