Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/16

Rh went on, I daresay, much after the fashion of most trips of the kind. Everything, however, was so fresh and novel to me, and my imagination so disposed to paint every object in its fairest hues, that posed to paint every object in its fairest hues, that I should doubtless have been indignant with the person who had said so at the time. But so it ever is. There is perhaps no period in which Fancy is more busy, adorning the visions of hope in its richest and most varied colours, than when proceeding to visit those lands―particularly those southern lands―which are associated with so much that is grand in history and romantic in story. I was fully conscious of its influence. Everything was an incident, and the most trifling events were invested with more that their ordinary degree of interest. The porpoises appeared to leap higher, the stars to shine brighter, the phosphorescent light to be more brilliant, the passengers to be more agreeable, and even those sea odours (for everything must have its foil) not to be quite so abominable and repulsive. Ah! at that moment the future was bright as the dawn of day,

 For life itself was new, And the heart promised what the fancy drew.

Among the passengers on board, my attention was particularly attracted to one individual who, in