CHAPTER V.

Your most intimate friend, however dull, may be guilty of a statistical quarto; your youngest daughter may, unknown to you, write all the poetry for a magazine, besides having a volume of fragments in prose and verse, almost ready for publication. Oh! glorious days for the rag-gatherer and the paper-maker! Oh! lamentable days for the wings of the grey goose and the PHANTASMAGORIA.

crow.

WHEN Lord Mowbray took his sudden departure from the Hall, he betook himself to a villa he possessed on the banks of the Thames, near Windsor. To this place he retired, with a firm intention to come to some resolution in regard to his future life. It was a sylvan scene of English beauty; and here he thought to lose sight of certain uneasy sensations, which recent events had forced irresistibly and involuntarily upon him.

But we cannot always fly from ourselves at the moment we wish it; and while he mused on the stream as it coursed along, now bending the heads of the bulrushes by its pressure, now buoying up the large circular leaves of the water-lily, whose blossom, like the Naiad queen of the element, floated on its surface, he drew a fanciful resemblance between these objects and himself.

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My youth," he said, "where is it? hurrying fast away like the current of the river, and like it, soon to be swallowed up in the immeasurable ocean of eternity! My pursuits and prospects resemble only those reeds, now bent and changing in their direction, now showing an evanescent blossom, that depends for its support on an uncertain element, which bears but too apt an analogy to my own restless mind; for I too have cherished and supported some flowers that bloomed upon the surface of my precarious affections; but I have dealt rudely with their fragile texture, and they are sunk and overwhelmed."

Had any body told Lord Mowbray that he was poetising on life, he would have smiled in derision; but when the feelings are roused, the most torpid imagination becomes poetical, and,

unknown to himself, he now looked upon existence from that height which renders the dullest view of it sublime. He saw, in his own character, the gifts of nature and of fortune despised, misused, squandered, contemned; he felt that he might have been a statesman, a warrior, a man of letters, or a Mæcenas; a patron, at least, of pursuits which, if he had not energy sufficient to prosecute, he had fortune enough to encourage, and he was deeply alive to their charm and influence. He felt within himself (nor was he mistaken in the feeling) the power of these many varied gifts; and he had essayed in turn the different careers which they opened; but, satisfied with the proof thus given to the world that he might have excelled in any that had been his choice, he withdrew from the competition abruptly, even as though he disdained the goal for which he had started.

In fact he did so, for there had been hitherto no preponderating power in his mind, no defined sense of moral obligation to fill the duties of his station, which could give efficacy or stability to his choice, or fix on Lord Mowbray's actions the stamp of character; the "A quoi

bon?" which Madame de Staël has denounced as "la plus vulgaire de tout les questions," was the constant question with which he neutralized every attempt; and in truth, when there exists no motive superior to the transient ends of this world's cares, there cannot exist in any mind a sustaining principle to persevere in climbing the tiresome steeps of laudable ambition, or in pursuing the more blessed, but still more rugged paths of private duty.

The consciousness of this great want, in Lord Mowbray's instance, was gradually corroding while it hardened a naturally kind and generous heart. The pleasure of the passing hour, or rather I should say, of its ease; the excitement of the moment's wit, which, like brilliant bubbles flung by children in the air, was gone as soon as called into existence: these had insensibly usurped the place of higher attainments and nobler pursuits, and supplied the votary of indolence and selfishness with all that was required to make life glide easily away.

Thus was Lord Mowbray in danger of being confirmed in habits which, though repugnant to his better reason, he had not sufficient strength

of character successfully to combat, when the unexpected appearance of one who had lived with him at another period of his life, startled him from this half lethargic half sardonic state of being, and made him involuntarily exclaim, "Was I born for this ?"

The Rev. Mr. Altamont was the visitor announced to Lord Mowbray-a person equally beloved by the gay and the grave; one whose varied talents made him the delight and soul of the society in which he lived; and whose powerful mind spread itself over a wide circle of influential bearings, and was ever directed to the support of the principles he professed, unwarped by interest, and unintimidated by rank or station. Those who envied his success through life, and were most inclined to depreciate the abilities and worth that had led to it, nevertheless, dared not openly avow their feelings; and, in his presence, were frequently beguiled into sentiments which, if not of friendship, were certainly those which the pleasure and amusement arising from Mr. Altamont's conversation, were sure to beget. Such was the man, whose