'To the Rev. Father Ignatius for his earnest preaching, which might almost have made me a monk, had not Thomas Carlyle and his _Heroes_, especially the lecture on Mahomet, given me to understand the true significance of a Messiah. 'To Bulwer for his _Zanoni_, which first gave me a hint of the possible natural "supernatural," and thus for ever saved me from dogmatising in negatives against the transcendental. 'To Sir Edwin Arnold for his _Light of Asia,_ also to Mr. Sinnett for his _Esoteric Buddhism,_ books which, coming to me about the same time, together with some others like them, first gave some occupation to an "unchartered freedom," gained in many forgotten steps, in the form of a faith which transfigured my life for many months into the most beautiful enthusiasm a man could know,--and which had almost sent me to the Himalayas! 'That it did not quite achieve that, though much of the light it gave me still remains, I owe to R.M., who, with no dialectic, but with one bald question, and the reading of one poem, robbed me of my fairy palace of Oriental speculation in the twinkling of an eye. Why it went I have never really quite known; but surely, it was gone, and the wind and the bare star-light were alone in its place. 'Dear Mac., I have not seen you for ever so long, and surely you have forgotten how that night, long ago, you asked with such a strange, almost childlike, simplicity: "_Is_ there a soul?" But I have not forgotten, nor how I made no answer at all, but only staggered, and how, with your strange, dreamy voice, you chanted for comfort:-- '"This hot, hard flame with which our bodies burn Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil; Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn To water-lilies; the brown fields men till Will be more fruitful for our love to-night: Nothing is lost in Nature; all things live in Death's despite. * * * * * '"So when men bury us beneath the yew Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be, And thy soft eyes lush blue-bells dimmed with dew; And when the white narcissus wantonly Kisses the wind, its playmate, some faint joy Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy. '"... How my heart leaps up To think of that grand living after death In beast and bird and flower, when this cup, Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath, And with the pale leaves of some autumn day, The soul, earth's earliest conqueror, becomes earth's last great prey. '"O think of it! We shall inform ourselves Into all sensuous life; the goat-foot faun, The centaur, or the merry, bright-eyed elves That leave they: dancing rings to spite the dawn Upon the meadows, shall not be more near Than you and I to Nature's mysteries, for we shall hear