But though he read with his lips and followed with his eyes, his eager mind was far away in that wondrous dreamland where his mental life was spent. After he had diligently read through the three volumes of some popular novel, he was found to be ignorant of the plot, to know nothing of the characters, and to have no conception even of the names of hero and heroine. These stories interested him in no way: they related to a world of which he knew little, and cared less. Whilst he read, his mind was following some mystic weaving of a dance, in the air, of gulls and swallows; tracing parables in the flowers that dotted his sward; or musing over some text of Holy Scripture. To be on the face of his cliff, to sit hour by hour in his little hut of wreck-wood, with the boiling Atlantic before him, sunk in dream or meditation, was his delight. Or, kneeling in his gloomy chancel, poring over the sacred page, meditating, he would go off into strange trances, and see sights: Morwenna, gleaming before him with pale face, exquisitely beautiful, and golden hair, and deep blue eyes, telling him where she lay, drawing him on to chivalrous love, like Aslauga in Fouqué’s exquisite tale. Or, he saw angels ascending and descending in his dark chancel, and heard “a noise of hymns.” A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the holy Grail. With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-like mingles with the stars. We have seen hitherto the sparkling merriment of his life; but this was the surging of the surface of a character that rolled on its mysterious, unfathomable way. To him the spiritual world was intensely real: he had in him the makings of a mystic. The outward world, the carnal flesh, he looked upon with contempt, with almost the disgust of a Manichæan. The spiritual life was the real life: the earthly career was a passing, troubled dream, that teased the soul, and broke its contemplations. The true aim of man was to disentangle his soul from the sordid cares of earth, and to raise it on the wings of meditation and prayer to union with God. Consequently the true self is the spiritual man: this none but the spiritual man can understand. The vicar accommodated himself to ordinary society, but he did not belong to it. His spirit hovered high above in the thin, clear air, whilst his body and earthly mind laughed, and joked, and laboured, and sorrowed below. Trouble was the anguish of the soul recalling its prerogative. The fits of depression which came on him were the moments when the soul was asserting its true power, pining as the captive for its home and proper freedom.