Never have I seen a more noble tragic face.  In the centre of the forehead there was a great furrow of care, towards which the brows rose piteously.  What a deep solemn grief in the eyes!  They looked blankly at the object before them, but through it, as it were, and into the grief beyond.  In moments of pain, have you not looked at some indifferent object so?  It mingles dumbly with your grief, and remains afterwards connected with it in your mind.  It may be some indifferent thing—­a book which you were reading at the time when you received her farewell letter (how well you remember the paragraph afterwards—­the shape of the words, and their position on the page); the words you were writing when your mother came in, and said it was all over—­she was married—­Emily married—­to that insignificant little rival at whom you have laughed a hundred times in her company.  Well, well; my friend and reader, whoe’er you be—­old man or young, wife or maiden—­you have had your grief-pang.  Boy, you have lain awake the first night at school, and thought of home.  Worse still, man, you have parted from the dear ones with bursting heart:  and, lonely boy, recall the bolstering an unfeeling comrade gave you; and, lonely man, just torn from your children—­their little tokens of affection yet in your pocket—­pacing the deck at evening in the midst of the roaring ocean, you can remember how you were told that supper was ready, and how you went down to the cabin and had brandy-and-water and biscuit.  You remember the taste of them.  Yes; for ever.  You took them whilst you and your Grief were sitting together, and your Grief clutched you round the soul.  Serpent, how you have writhed round me, and bitten me.  Remorse, Remembrance, &c., come in the night season, and I feel you gnawing, gnawing! . . .  I tell you that man’s face was like Laocoon’s (which, by the way, I always think over-rated.  The real head is at Brussels, at the Duke Daremberg’s, not at Rome).

That man!  What man?  That man of whom I said that his magnificent countenance exhibited the noblest tragic woe.  He was not of European blood, he was handsome, but not of European beauty.  His face white—­not of a Northern whiteness; his eyes protruding somewhat, and rolling in their grief.  Those eyes had seen the Orient sun, and his beak was the eagle’s.  His lips were full.  The beard, curling round them, was unkempt and tawny.  The locks were of a deep, deep coppery red.  The hands, swart and powerful, accustomed to the rough grasp of the wares in which he dealt, seemed unused to the flimsy artifices of the bath.  He came from the Wilderness, and its sands were on his robe, his cheek, his tattered sandal, and the hardy foot it covered.