CHAPTER XI.

Y readers will, perhaps, agree with me

MY

in being sorry to find that we are coming to the end of our present series. I say 'my readers,' though I have so little part in purveying for them, that I mostly consider myself one of them. It is no light task, however, to give a good account of a conversation; and I say this, and would wish people to try whether I am not right in saying so, not to call attention to my labour in the matter, but because it may be well to notice how difficult it is to report anything truly. Were this better known, it might be an aid to charity, and prevent some of those feuds which grow out of the poverty of man's powers to express, to apprehend, to represent, rather than out of any malignant part of his nature. But I must not go on moralizing. I almost feel that Ellesmere is looking over my shoulder and breaking into my discourse with sharp words, which I have lately been so much accustomed to.

I had expected that we should have many more readings this summer, as I knew that Milverton had prepared more essays for us. But finding, as he said, that the other subjects he had in hand were larger than he had anticipated, or was prepared for, he would not read even to us what he had written. Though I was very sorry for this, for I may not be the chronicler in another year, I could not but say he was right. Indeed, my ideas of literature, nourished as they have been in much solitude and by the reading, if I say so, mainly of our classical authors, are very high placed, though I hope not fantastical. And, therefore, I would not discourage any one in expending whatever thought and labour might be in him upon any literary work.

may

In fine, then, I did not attempt to dissuade Milverton from his purpose of postponing our readings; and we agreed that there should only be one more for the present. I wished it to be at our favourite place on the lawn, which had become endeared to me as the spot of many of our friendly councils.

It was later than usual when I came over to Worth-Ashton for this reading; and as I gained the brow of the hill, some few clouds

tinged with red were just grouping together to form the accustomed pomp upon the exit of the setting sun. I believe I mentioned in the introduction to our first conversation, that the ruins of an old castle could be seen from our place of meeting. Milverton and Ellesmere were talking about it as I joined them.

MILVERTON. Yes, Ellesmere, many a man has looked out of those windows upon a sunset like this, with some of the thoughts that must come into the minds of all men, on seeing this great emblem, the setting sun-has felt, in looking at it, his coming end, or the closing of his greatness. Those old walls must have been witness to every kind of human emotion. Henry the Second was there; John, I think; Margaret of Anjou and Cardinal Beaufort; William of Wykeham; Henry the Eighth's Cromwell; and many others who have made some stir in the world.

ELLESMERE. And, perhaps, the greatest there were those who made no stir.

'The world knows nothing of its greatest men.' MILVERTON. I am slow to believe that. I cannot well reconcile myself to the idea, that

great capacities are given for nothing. They bud out in some way or other.

ELLESMERE. Yes, but it may not be in a noisy

way.

MILVERTON. There is one thing that always strikes me very much in looking at the lives of men: how soon, as it were, their course seems to be determined. They say, or do, or think, something which gives a bias at once to the whole of their career.

DUNSFORD. You may go farther back than that; and speak of the impulses they get from their ancestors.

ELLESMERE. Or the nets around them of other people's ways and wishes.

many things, you see, that go to

puppets.

There are

make men

MILVERTON. I was only noticing the circumstance, that there was such a thing, as it appeared to me, as this early direction. But, if it has been ever so unfortunate, a man's folding his hands over it, in melancholy mood, and suffering himself to be made a puppet by it, is a sadly weak proceeding. Most thoughtful men have probably some dark fountains in their souls, by the side of which, if there were time, and it were decorous, they could let their thoughts sit

down and wail indefinitely. That long Byron wail fascinated men for a time; because there is that in human nature. Luckily, a great deal besides.

ELLESMERE. I delight in the helpful and hopeful men.

MILVERTON. A man that I admire very much, and have met with occasionally, is one who is always of use in any matter he is mixed up with, simply because he wishes, that the best should be got out of the thing that is possible. There does not seem much in the description of such a character; but only see it in contrast with that of a brilliant man, for instance, who does not ever fully care about the matter in hand.

DUNSFORD. I can thoroughly imagine the difference.

MILVERTON. The human race may be bound up together in some mysterious way, each of us having a profound interest in the fortunes of the whole, and so, to some extent, of every portion of it. Such a man as I have described acts as though he had an intuitive perception of that relation, and therefore, a sort of family feeling for mankind, which gives him satisfaction in