Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/351

Rh moon's surface through the Cambridge Observatory telescope, or the first sight of death. Some of these first sights are invested with pleasure unutterable, others with infinite pain; and of such latter are often those peeps within ourselves which we sometimes obtain.

What atmospheric effects, what changing lights, all beautiful, invest the outer landscape with magic, even where the scenery is tame. How rarely is it unpleasing to the eye. And it is the same when we turn our eyes inwards, and contemplate the landscape of our own selves, what glories of light flood all, what richness of foliage clothes all, how picturesque are the inequalities! How vast the surface to the horizon! And yet, it sometimes happens, not often, and not even to all, that a shadow falls over the scene and blots out all its comeliness, and then ensues a flare, a lightning flash, and we see all—no longer beautiful, but infinitely ghastly.

Saint Theresa, in one of her autobiographical sketches, says that she was shown her own self, on one occasion of introspection, not as she was wont to view it, but as it was in naked reality, and she could never after recall the vision without a shudder.

Who sees himself as he is? Who wishes to do so? Who would not be offended were you to exhibit to his eyes a picture of himself as he is? No one likes his own photograph, for the sun does not flatter. But no photographs have yet been taken of man's interior self; if they were, no one would consent to look on his own; he would spend all his fortune in buying up the copies and destroying the plates.

We are accustomed to view ourselves as those do who stand on the Brocken, magnified a thousand fold, with rainbow haloes about our heads. I have known a little fellow, who reached my elbow, strut with infinite consequence, and gesticulate with tragic dignity on the Brocken,