He had been a pilgrim, a prisoner in the Holy Land, had visited the wild monasteries of Lebanon and Athos; he had seen the pyramids "piercing the deep Egyptian sky," had mused under the broken arches of the Coliseum, and listened, like the great historian of Rome, to the bare-footed friars chanting their hymns among the ruins of Jupiter Capitoline. Like Ulysses, he had seen the lands, he had studied the manners, and learned to speak the tongues, of many men and nations; nor, while he had learned in the east strange mysteries of science, though he had solved the secrets of chemistry, and learned, long before the birth of "starry Galileo," to know the stars with their uprisings and their settings; though he knew the nature, the properties, the secret virtues, and the name of every floweret of the forest, of every ore of the swart mine, he had not neglected the gentler culture, which wreathes so graciously the wrinkled brow of wisdom. Not a poet himself, so far as the weaving the mysterious chains of rhythm, he was a genuine poet of the heart. Not a blush, not a smile, not a tear, not a frown on the lovely face of nature, but awakened a response in his large and sympathetic soul; not an emotion of the human heart, from the best to the basest, but struck within him some chord of deep and hidden feeling; to read an act of self-devoted courage, of charity, of generosity, of self-denial, would make his flesh quiver, his hair rise, his cheek burn. To hear of great deeds would stir him as with the blast of a war trumpet. He was one, in fact, of those gifted beings who could discern "Music in running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing;" and as he felt himself, so had he taught her to feel; and of what he knew himself, much he had taught her to know likewise. Seeing, hearing, knowing him to be what he was, and, as is the wont ever with young and ingenuous minds, imagining him to be something far wiser, greater, and better than he really was, she was content at first, while other men were yet unknown to her, to hold him something almost supernaturally, ineffably beneficent and wise; and this incomparable being she knew also to be a Saxon. She saw her aunt, who, gentle as she was, and gracious, had yet a touch of the old Norse pride of blood, untutored by the teachings of religion, and untamed by the discipline of the church, bow submissively to his advice, defer respectfully to his opinion, hang persuaded on his eloquence--and yet he was a Saxon.