though he has read but the first columns, it is time to go. "The
shadows of the mountains fall rapidly, and spread over the plain. The
moon begins to appear in the east like a silver circle gleaming
through the sky, and the avenue of poplars is wrapped in the uncertain
dusk of twilight.... The monastery bell, the only one that still hangs
in its ruined Byzantine tower, begins to call to prayers, and one near
and one afar, some with sharp metallic notes, and some with solemn,
muffled tones, the other bells of the hillside towns reply.... It
seems like a harmony that falls from heaven and rises at the same time
from the earth, becomes confounded, and floats in space, intermingling
with the fading sounds of the dying day and the first sighs of the
newborn night.

"And now all is silenced,--Madrid, political interests, ardent
struggles, human miseries, passions, disappointments, desires, all is
hushed in that divine music. My soul is now as serene as deep and
silent water. A faith in something greater, in a future though unknown
destiny, beyond this life, a faith in eternity,--in short, an
all-absorbing larger aspiration, overwhelms that petty faith which we
might term personal, that faith in the morrow, that sort of goad that
spurs on irresolute minds, and that is so needful if one must struggle
and exist and accomplish something in this world."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Obras_, _vol._ II, pp. 222-229.]

This graceful musing, full in the original of those rich harmonies
that only the Spanish language can express, will serve sufficiently to
give an impression of the series as a whole. The broad but fervent
faith expressed in the last lines indicates a deeply religious and
somewhat mystical nature. This characteristic of Becquer may be