skies, she opened to him fair glimpses of the Beautiful, which is given
to Peasant as to Prince,--showed to him that on the surface of earth
there is something nobler than fortune, that he who can view the world as
a poet is always at soul a king; while to practical purpose itself, that
larger and more profound invention, which poetry stimulates, supplied the
grand design and the subtle view,--leading him beyond the mere ingenuity
of the mechanic, and habituating him to regard the inert force of the
matter at his command with the ambition of the Discoverer. But, above
all, the discontent that was within him finding a vent, not in deliberate
war upon this actual world, but through the purifying channels of song,
in the vent itself it evaporated, it was lost. By accustoming ourselves
to survey all things with the spirit that retains and reproduces them
only in their lovelier or grander aspects, a vast philosophy of
toleration for what we before gazed on with scorn or hate insensibly
grows upon us. Leonard looked into his heart after the Enchantress had
breathed upon it; and through the mists of the fleeting and tender
melancholy which betrayed where she had been, he beheld a new sun of
delight and joy dawning over the landscape of human life.

Thus, though she was dead and gone from his actual knowledge, this
mysterious kinswoman--"a voice, and nothing more"--had spoken to him,
soothed, elevated, cheered, attuned each discord into harmony; and if now
permitted from some serener sphere to behold the life that her soul thus
strangely influenced, verily with yet holier joy the saving and lovely
spirit might have glided onward in the Eternal Progress.

We call the large majority of human lives obscure. Presumptuous that we
are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of
nameless graves may have lighted to renown?