Every one has known a similar strange, indistinct, feeling at certain times and places, and with a similar inability to trace the cause.

And yet, is it not singular that in poetry, which wears most feelings to an echo, I leave never met with any attempt to describe it ?" "Because poetry," said Constance, "is, after all, but a hackneyed imitation of the most common thoughts, giving them merely a gloss by the brilliancy of verse.

And yet how little poets _know!_ They _imagine,_ and they _imitate;_--behold all their secrets!" "Perhaps you are right," said Godolphin, musingly; "and I, who have often vainly fancied I had the poetical temperament, have been so chilled and sickened by the characteristics of the tribe, that I have checked its impulses with a sort of disdain; and thus the Ideal, having no vent in me, preys within, creating a thousand undefined dreams and unwilling superstitions, making me enamoured of the Shadowy and Unknown, and dissatisfying me with the petty ambitions of the world." "You will awake hereafter," said Constance, earnestly.
Godolphin shook his head, and replied not.
Their way now lay along a green lane that gradually wound round a hill commanding a view of great richness and beauty.

Cottages, and spires, and groves, gave life--but it was scattered and remote life--to the scene; and the broad stream, whose waves, softened in the distance, did not seem to break the even surface of the tide, flowed onward, glowing in the sunlight, till it was lost among dark and luxuriant woods.
Both once more arrested their horses by a common impulse, and both became suddenly silent as they gazed.

Godolphin was the first to speak: it brought to his memory a scene in that delicious land, whose Southern loveliness Claude has transfused to the canvas, and De Stael to the page.