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It is the restless activity of the mind in fever that constitutes its most painful anguish; the fast-flitting thoughts that rush ever onwards, crowding sensation on sensation, an endless train of exciting images without purpose or repose; or even worse, the straining effort to pursue some vague and shadowy conception which evades us ever as we follow, but which mingles with all around and about us, haunting us at midnight as in the noontime.

The dayspring of youth gilds the tops of the distant mountains before us, and many a weary day through life, when clouds and storms are thickening around us, we live upon the mere memory of the past. Some fast-flitting prospect of a bright future, some passing glimpse of a sunlit valley, tinges all our after-years.

What a claim upon your love has he who can, by some passing word, some fast-flitting thought, bring back the days of your youth! What interest can he not excite by some anecdote of your boyish days, some well-remembered trait of youthful daring, or early enterprise!

It was a thoroughly Irish landscape: the changeful sky; the fast-flitting shadows; the brilliant sunlight; the plenteous fields; the broad and swelling stream; the dark mountain, from whose brown crest a wreath of thin blue smoke was rising, were all there smiling yet sadly, like her own sons, across whose lowering brow some fitful flash of fancy ever playing dallies like sunbeams on a darkening stream, nor marks the depth that lies below.

It was at this window Kate now sat with Nina, looking over the vast plain, on which a rich moonlight was streaming, the shadows of fast-flitting clouds throwing strange and fanciful effects over a space almost wide enough to be a prairie. 'What a deal have mere names to do with our imaginations, Nina! said Kate. 'Is not that boundless sweep before us as fine as your boasted Campagna?