The youngest, Ariel, his mother most loved; for he was mild of temper,
and of a make which would have shamed the Apollo, cut by hands skilled
to search out the hidden springs of manly beauty, and cunningly
transform the ideal into a reality, to stand forever a wonder before the
eyes of men. His auburn locks, parted on either side, fell thick, and
rested upon his shoulders; and upon his brow, fairer than woman, sat
intellect, softened and refined to express the hopes and sorrows, the
sweet delights and bitter ills, which God gave a heritage to Adam and
his seed when he drove out the sinning pair from Paradise. Tall, he
stood like a cedar upon Lebanon. His eyes, large and lustrous, in color
his mother’s and heaven’s, seemed ever dreaming of a life which, cradled
upon earth, had elsewhere its happiness; and the long brown lashes that
veiled their intenser light, shadowed with melancholy a face which else
had been too bright. In childhood, he wept over tales of that fair land
lost by his first ancestors; and sought on every side, through the
sombre wood, and along the flowery mead, and up the streams to their
sources amid the valleys of the hills, for some trace of a glory
half-extinct which might lead him onward to its walls, guarded by flame;
then, weary and sad, he would stand by the sea, and look out across its
waters, and strain his eyes to find a new earth, and catch a glimpse of
that strange fire which, under the rule of night, mellows the waves, and
makes their path more enticing than the walks of Arcady the blest, or
the garden in which Italia’s poet subdued Ruggerio to a witch’s love.
Thus found by his mother, after long search, he would rest his head upon
her knees, and repeat his hopes and disappointments, while she, softly
chiding, wiped his tears away. Growing toward manhood, he, unwillingly
and slow, now doubting and now believing, put off his childish faith,
and sought for and found a rest more perfect, and more noble far, than
that paradise which fled before the knowledge of evil and of good.