and leaf, than he would perish. Day by day he grew weaker. The luxuriant hair relaxed with the damps that rose on the white forehead, as if the moisture of the grave were already there. The blue veins shone on the temples with unnatural clearness; and often, when Francesca's lips were pressed to them in affectionate but vain endeavour to soothe their burning pain, she started at the loud and rapid beating of their feverish pulses. His hand was wan and slender as a woman's, with the same delicate pink inside: and the like feminine fairness extended over his face, and rendered more striking the terrible yet lovely red that burnt its small circle on his cheek—the death-rose of consumption. Formerly his large black eyes were wild and restless; now, larger and clearer than ever, there was a calm and settled brightness, like the luminous aspect of some still summer star, whose light is poetry—poetry, which is the faint echo of the mysteries of the universe—the beautifier and the unraveller! All the stormier passions had died away, like the winds on the blue surface of some unruffled lake. Their deep calm orbs had no anger, no envy, no discontent, to convey—no vain repinings, and yet vainer longings. The shadow of mortality
