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142

ERNEST'S REPLY.

but a narrow circle, ceasing with our own life, to the incalculable and everlasting good we may produce, as public men, by one book or by one law. Depend upon it, that the Almighty, who sums up all the good and all the evil done by his creatures in a just balance, will not judge the august benefactors of the world with the same severity as those drones of society who have no great services to show in the internal leger as a setoff to the indulgence of their small vices. These things rightly considered, Maltravers, you will have every inducement that can tempt a lofty mind and a pure ambition to awaken from the voluptuous indolence of the literary Sybarite-and contend worthily in the world's wide Altis for a great prize."

Maltravers never before felt so flattered-so stirred into high resolves. The stately eloquence, the fervid encouragement of this man, usually so cold and fastidious, roused him like the sound of a trumpet. He stopped short, his breath heaved thick, his cheek flushed. "De Montaigne," said he, "your words have cleared away a thousand doubts and scruples-they have gone right to my heart. For the first time I understand what fame is-what the object, and what the reward of labour! Visions, hopes, aspirations, I may have had before-for months a new spirit has been fluttering within me. I have felt the wings breaking from the shell. But all was confused, dim, uncertain. I doubted the wisdom of effort, with life so short, and the pleasures of youth so sweet. I now look no longer on life, but as a part of the eternity to which I feel we were born, and I recognise the solemn truth that our objects, to be worthy life, should be worthy creatures in whom the living principle never is extinct. Farewell, come joy or sorrow-failure or success-I will struggle to be worthy of your friendship, your exhortation."

Maltravers sprang into his boat, and the shades of night soon snatched him from the lingering gaze of De Montaigne.

RND OF BOOK III.

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"Strange is the land that holds thee-and thy couch

Is widow'd of the loved one."

Translation by R. G.

143

BOOK I V.

CHAPTER I.

"I, alas!

Have lived but on this earth a few sad years;
And so my lot was order'd, that a father
First turn'd the moments of awakening life

To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope."

CENCI.

FROM accompanying Maltravers along the noiseless progress of mental education, we are now called a while to cast our glances back at the ruder and harsher ordeal which Alice Darvil was ordained to pass. Along her path poetry shed no flowers, nor were her lonely steps towards the distant shrine at which her pilgrimage found its rest lighted by the mystic lamp of science, or steered by the thousand stars which are never dim in the heavens for those favoured eyes from which genius and fancy have removed many of the films of clay. Not along the aerial and exalted ways that wind far above the homes and business of common men-the solitary Alps of spiritual philosophy-wandered the desolate steps of the child of poverty and sorrow. the beaten and rugged highways of common life, with a weary heart, and with bleeding feet, she went her melancholy course. But the goal which is the great secret of life, the summum arcanum of all philosophy, whether the practical or the ideal, was, perhaps, no less attainable for that humble girl than for the elastic step and aspiring heart of him who thirsted after the great, and almost believed in the impossible.

On

We return to that dismal night in which Alice was torn from the roof of her lover. It was long before she recovered her consciousness of what had passed, and gained a full perception of the fearful revolution which had taken place in her destinies. It was then a gray and dreary morning twilight; and the rude but VOL. I.-N

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covered vehicle which bore her was rolling along the deep ruts of an unfrequented road winding among the unenclosed and mountainous wastes that in England usually betoken the neighbourhood of the sea. With a

shudder Alice looked round: Walters, her father's accomplice, lay extended at her feet, and his heavy breathing showed that he was fast asleep. Darvil himself was urging on the jaded and sorry horse, and his broad back was turned towards Alice; the rain, from which, in his position, he was but ill protected by the awning, dripped dismally from his slouched hat; and now, as he turned round, and his sinister and gloomy gaze rested upon the face of Alice, his bad countenance rendered more haggard by the cold raw light of the cheerless dawn, completed the hideous picture of unveiled and ruffianly wretchedness.

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Ho, ho! Alley, so you are come to your senses," said he, with a kind of joyless grin. "I am glad of it, for I can have no fainting fine ladies with me. You have had a long holiday, Alley; you must now learn once more to work for your poor father. Ah, you have been d-d sly; but never mind the past; I forgive you. You must not run away again without my leave; if you are fond of sweethearts, I won't balk you, but your old father must go shares, Alley."

Alice could hear no more: she covered her face with the cloak that had been thrown about her, and though she did not faint, her senses seemed to be locked and paralyzed; she felt as if she were the victim of a hideous dream. By-and-by Walters woke, and the two men, heedless of her presence, conversed upon their plans. By degrees she recovered sufficient self-possession to listen, in the instinctive hope that some plan of escape might be suggested to her. But from what she could gather of the incoherent and various projects they discussed, one after another, disputing upon each with frightful oaths and scarce intelligible slang, she could only learn that it was resolved, at all events, to leave the district in which they were-but whither, seemed yet all undecided. The cart halted at last at a miserable-looking hut, which the signpost announced to be an inn that afforded good accommodation to travellers; to which announcement was annexed the following epigrammatic distich:

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