“Our passions,” said St. John, “are restless, and will make each experiment in their power, though vanity be the result of all. Disappointed in love, they yearn towards ambition; and the object of ambition, unlike that of love, never being wholly possessed, ambition is the more durable passion of the two. But sooner or later even that and all passions are sated at last; and when wearied of too wide a flight we limit our excursions, and looking round us discover the narrow bounds of our proper end, we grow satisfied with the loss of rapture if we can partake of enjoyment; and the experience which seemed at first so bitterly to betray us becomes our most real benefactor, and ultimately leads us to content. For it is the excess and not the nature of our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grew by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away.”
Before I could reply, our conversation received an abrupt and complete interruption for the night. The door was thrown open, and a man, pushing aside the servant with a rude and yet a dignified air, entered the room unannounced, and with the most perfect disregard to ceremony—
“How d’ye do, Mr. St. John,” said he,—“how d’ye do?—Pretty sort of a day we’ve had. Lucky to find you at home,—that is to say if you will give me some broiled oysters and champagne for supper.”
“With all my heart, Doctor,” said St. John, changing his manner at once from the pensive to an easy and somewhat brusque familiarity,—“with all my heart; but I am glad to hear you are a convert to champagne: you spent a whole evening last week in endeavouring to dissuade me from the sparkling sin.”
“Pish! I had suffered the day before from it; so, like a true Old Bailey penitent, I preached up conversion to others, not from a desire of their welfare, but a plaguy sore feeling for my own misfortune. Where did you dine to-day? At home! Oh! the devil! I starved on three courses at the Duke of Ormond’s.”
“Aha! Honest Matt was there?”
“Yes, to my cost. He borrowed a shilling of me for a chair. Hang this weather, it costs me seven shillings a day for coach-fare, besides my paying the fares of all my poor brother parsons, who come over from Ireland to solicit my patronage for a bishopric, and end by borrowing half-a-crown in the meanwhile. But Matt Prior will pay me again, I suppose, out of the public money?”
“To be sure, if Chloe does not ruin him first.”
“Hang the slut: don’t talk of her. How Prior rails against his place!* He says the excise spoils his wit, and that the only rhymes he ever dreams of now-a-days are ‘docket and cocket.’”
* In the Customs.