His
remarks belonged to something magnificent; but whether they were
applicable to the picture Donal could not tell; there was light
enough only to give a faint gleam to its gilded frame.
"Reach beyond reach!" said his lordship; "endless! infinite! How
would not poor Maldon, with his ever fresh ambition after the
unattainable, have gloated on such a scene! In Nature alone you
front success! She does what she means! She alone does what she
means!"
"If," said Donal, more for the sake of confirming the earl's
impression that he had a listener, than from any idea that he would
listen--"if you mean the object of Nature is to present us with
perfection, I cannot allow she does what she intends: you rarely see
her produce anything she would herself call perfect. But if her
object be to make us behold perfection with the inner eye, this
object she certainly does gain, and that just by stopping short
of--"
He did not finish the sentence. A sudden change was upon him,
absorbing him so that he did not even try to account for it:
something seemed to give way in his head--as if a bubble burst in
his brain; and from that moment whatever the earl said, and whatever
arose in his own mind, seemed to have outward existence as well. He
heard and knew the voice of his host, but seemed also in some
inexplicable way, which at the time occasioned him no surprise, to
see the things which had their origin in the brain of the earl.
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