Into the cause of this, I do not profess now to enter, and must remain content with the statement of my belief. It is curious, moreover, to remark that a like phenomenon is to be noticed in the literary annals of the other countries of Europe, where, amid,—and partly on account of,—a general diffusion of intellectual light, the eye is attracted by the radiance of few bright particular stars. "Historians," says S. C. Hall, in the "Postscript" to his charming Book of Memories, "of the later half of the nineteenth century will not have such materials as the first half of it supplied. 'There were giants on earth' when I was young; there are few such to excite wonder, as well as reverence, in the existing age, although, for one who was then an 'author by profession,' there are now a hundred; while readers have multiplied a thousandfold." It is with this glorious band that the reader is now privileged to consort; and this, by the phosphoric pencil of Maclise,[1] and the frequent words of his literary collaborator,—not to speak of my own humble labours,—in such intimacy, that, though born in a later day, and remote, perchance, from lettered haunts, he may almost lay down the volume with the boast of Horace:—
"————————quidquid sum ego, quamvis
Infra Lucili censum ingeniumque; tamen me
Cum magnis vixisse invita fatebitur usque
Invidia .…"
I now bid farewell to the "Gallery" wherein I have lingered so long. As I have slowly paced its "long-drawn aisles," there has been the echo of mighty voices in my ears, and a rustle beneath my feet as of dry and withered leaves in Vall'ombrosa. It is with regret and reluctance that I lay down my pen. I confess my own abiding fondness for the memory of these grand masterful spirits of the former half-century; nor can I, gazing into the "dark rereward and abysm of time," discern other like period so lavish in the production of men and women of marked and characteristic genius. I love to study their epoch,—to ponder over their books,—to trace and identify the fugitive piece,—to chronicle the obscure fact,—and to snatch the "trivial fond record" from the limbo of oblivion. The admiration which they claimed from me in a long past day has not suffered diminution with time; and when I remember their originality of mind, their force of character, their distinction of personality,—
- ↑ "Of the luminous effulgence flung round all these matters by that brilliant enlightener (λαμπαδοφορος), Alfred Croquis, we know not in what style to speak fittingly, or where to find adequate terms of eulogy."—Father Prout's Self-Examination.
