his feet as the Englishman glided on by the cool and starry beach. At
length he arrived at the spot, and there, leaning against the broken
pillar, he beheld a man wrapped in a long mantle, and in an attitude
of profound repose. He approached, and uttered the name of Zanoni. The
figure turned, and he saw the face of a stranger: a face not stamped by
the glorious beauty of Zanoni, but equally majestic in its aspect, and
perhaps still more impressive from the mature age and the passionless
depth of thought that characterised the expanded forehead, and deep-set
but piercing eyes.

"You seek Zanoni," said the stranger; "he will be here anon; but,
perhaps, he whom you see before you is more connected with your destiny,
and more disposed to realise your dreams."

"Hath the earth, then, another Zanoni?"

"If not," replied the stranger, "why do you cherish the hope and the
wild faith to be yourself a Zanoni? Think you that none others
have burned with the same godlike dream? Who, indeed in his first
youth,--youth when the soul is nearer to the heaven from which it
sprang, and its divine and primal longings are not all effaced by the
sordid passions and petty cares that are begot in time,--who is there
in youth that has not nourished the belief that the universe has
secrets not known to the common herd, and panted, as the hart for the
water-springs, for the fountains that lie hid and far away amidst the
broad wilderness of trackless science? The music of the fountain is
heard in the soul WITHIN, till the steps, deceived and erring, rove away
from its waters, and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert. Think you
that none who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that the
yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us utterly in vain?