What joy it was to see my Urania again! How happy I was to feast my eyes
on her once more! That charming personification of the Muse of heaven
has never left me since. In my studious hours the beautiful statue
always stood before me, seeming to remind me of the goddess's
conversation,--to tell me the destinies of astronomy, to direct me in
my youthful scientific aspirations. Since then more passionate emotions
have beguiled me, captivated me, and troubled my senses; but I shall
never forget the ideal sentiment with which the Muse of the stars had
inspired me, the celestial journey on which she bore me away, the
unexpected panoramas she unrolled before my eyes, the truths she
revealed to me as to the extent of the universe, nor the happiness she
gave me by definitively settling my mind on the calm contemplation of
Nature and science as a career.
Part Second.
GEORGE SPERO.
[Illustration]
I.
LIFE.
An intense evening glow floated in the atmosphere like a wondrous golden
radiance. From the heights of Passy the view extended over the whole of
the great city, which at that time, more than ever before, was not a
city, but a world. The Universal Exhibition of 1867 had lavished all the
attractions and delights of the century on imperial Paris. The flowers
of civilization were blooming in their most brilliant tints, wasting
themselves away by the very ardor of their perfume,--fading, dying in
the full fever of youth. The crowned heads of Europe had just heard a
deafening trumpet-blast there, which was the last of the monarchy;
science, arts, industry had sowed their newest creations broadcast, with
an inexhaustible prodigality. It was a general delirium of men and
things. Regiments were marching, with music at their heads;
swift-rolling vehicles crossed each other from all directions; thousands
of people were moving about in the dust on the avenues, _quais_, and
boulevards: but the very dust, gilded by the rays of the setting sun,
crowned the splendid city like an aureole. The tall buildings, towers,
and steeples were ablaze with reflections from the fiery orb; tones from
a distant orchestra, mingled with a confused murmur of voices and other
sounds,--the brilliant, fit ending of a dazzling summer day,--poured
into the soul an undefined feeling of contentment, happiness, and
satisfaction. There was a kind of symbolical summing-up about it of the
evidences of the vitality of a great people in the zenith of its life
and fortune.