We, too, entered and began to traverse them,
and after we had proceeded about half-way my father told me that the
river Thames was flowing over our heads, with its ships on its
surface, and its fishes, and its bottom of mud and gravel--under all
these this illuminated corridor, with ourselves breathing and seeing
and walking therein. Would we ever again behold the upper world and
the sky? The atmosphere was not pleasant, and I was glad to find
myself climbing up another flight of stairs and emerging on the other
side of the river, which we had crossed on foot, dry-shod.
Of the famous personages of this epoch I did not see much; only I
remember that a woman who seemed taller than common, dressed in a dark
silk gown, and moving with a certain air of composure, as if she knew
she was right, and yet meant to be considerate of others; whose
features were plain, and whose voice had a resonance and modulation
unlike other voices, was spoken of in my hearing as bearing a name
which I had heard often, and which had a glamour for my boyish
imagination--Jenny Lind. There also rises before me the dark,
courteous visage and urbane figure of Monckton Milnes; but there was
something more and better than mere courtesy and urbanity about him;
the inner luminousness, I suppose, of what was nearly genius, and
would have been altogether that but for the swaddling-clothes of rank
and society which hampered it.
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