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214 a good supper. Considering how much we say that we do not mean, how fortunate it is that we are not taken at our word! We should then be cautious how we talked of rustic and innocent pleasures, of dying for love, and eternal constancy."

"We deceive ourselves on most subjects," said the Duke; "but I own, especially when I am out of humour, that a vision of some calm retreat, far 'from the busy hum of men,' is apt to rise upon my imagination,—all my poetry takes refuge 'in lonely glade or haunted dell.' I could not love a woman whose image was for ever accompanied in my memory by brick and mortar."

"All our poetical feelings," replied Francesca, "delight to link themselves with natural objects. The leaf, the flower, the star, the dew, are the inexhaustible sources of imagery."

"And one feeling, loveliest of all, delights in such connexion. The poet bears love with him to his own haunted solitude."

"Ah!" exclaimed Francesca, "All the finer mysteries of the spirit vanish in the crowd. Vanity is to the many the stimulus that affection is to the few."

"Yes," answered Buckingham, in a tone of voice so low that it was all but a whisper, "there is nothing so heartless as that hurrying