Of winds, and sigh!--but tremble not!"

Much in him was a type, or rather forerunner, of the intellectual spirit
that broke forth when we were children, among our countrymen, and is now
slowly dying away amidst the loud events and absorbing struggles of the
awakening world. But in one respect he stood aloof from all his tribe--in
his hard indifference to worldly ambition, and his contempt of fame. As
some sages have seemed to think the universe a dream, and self the only
reality, so in his austere and collected reliance upon his own mind--the
gathering in, as it were, of his resources, he appeared to consider the
pomps of the world as shadows, and the life of his own spirit the only
substance. He had built a city and a tower within the Shinar of his own
heart, whence he might look forth, unscathed and unmoved, upon the deluge
that broke over the rest of earth.

Only in one instance, and that, as we have seen, after much struggle, he
had given way to the emotions that agitate his kind, and had surrendered
himself to the dominion of another. This was against his theories--but
what theories ever resist love? In yielding, however, thus far, he seemed
more on his guard than ever against a broader encroachment. He had
admitted one 'fair spirit' for his 'minister,' but it was only with a
deeper fervour to invoke 'the desert' as 'his dwelling-place.' Thus, when
the Earl, who, like most practical judges of mankind, loved to apply to
each individual the motives that actuate the mass, and who only
unwillingly, and somewhat sceptically, assented to the exceptions, and
was driven to search for peculiar clues to the eccentric instance,--
finding, to his secret triumph, that Aram had admitted one intruding
emotion into his boasted circle of indifference, imagined that he should
easily induce him (the spell once broken) to receive another, he was
surprised and puzzled to discover himself in the wrong.