"Study them together, Morley," said the Banker; "look at no one part of the scheme, without a reference to the other. When you consider me, consider, at the same time, what influence my personal character and habits may have upon the footman that opened the door to you, and upon all my other servants. Then, if you will trace them home to the family cottage in the country or the lodging in some little back street in London, you will find, that just as I am a good or bad man, just as I am a kind or unkind master, just as I deal well and wisely with my inferiors, a corresponding result is transmitted through a long chain of cause and effect, to the tenants of the cottage or the lodging, of which I have been speaking. The same will be the case, though the process will be with more difficulty perceived, if you begin with a person in inferior station, and trace the results of his acts upon those above him. I have known a casual word spoken by a vicious servant, plant the seeds of vice in a young and previously-innocent mind, which have afterwards produced a harvest of misery, desolation, and remorse, in the bosom of a happy and virtuous family. I give you this as but an instance, to shew that we are continually acted upon from below, as well as from above. Take, therefore, the best means, examine both at the same time: thus will you gain a perfect view, and will not suffer the ideas acquired by the contemplation of one side of any question, to be so fixed in your mind as to exclude those arguments and facts which would modify or remove them."
"I will certainly follow your advice, my dear sir," replied Morley, "both because I am convinced that it is good, and because you give it; but I only fear that my time in London will be too short to see anything deeply, if, by comparing continually, I double the inquiry."
"Do you know, Morley," said Mr. Hamilton, musing, "I am not sure that there is not a greater, a more miserable kind of evil brought about by studying only one side of a question deeply, than by studying both superficially. However, my dear boy, dine with us to-night, where you will see some of those in the higher ranks, who are worthy of being known. There is a little party, too, I believe, in the evening, and you can begin 'Don Quixote' to-morrow."
Morley smiled, and promising to join the Banker's dinner-table, turned his steps towards the dwelling of his new friend, Lieberg. He easily found the house, which, as the reader well knows, was in a very central situation. The step of the door was washed with the greatest care, and rubbed with the peculiar kind of stone, to that especial purpose appropriate, till it was as white as snow. The door was of mahogany, with a small lozenge-shaped brass knocker, and a copper-plate fixed immediately under the instrument of noise, recommending, with the soft persuasion of the imperative mood, that the visitor should ring as well as knock. Morley Ernstein obeyed to the letter, and without a moment's delay, a servant out of livery opened the door, and replied to his demand, that Colonel Lieberg was at home. The addition of military rank to his friend's titles did not at all surprise Morley Ernstein; for there was in his whole appearance a certain soldier-like look which is seldom acquired by a civilian.
Every thing within the doors of the house was the pink of perfection. The drawing-room was beautifully furnished, and in every part of it were to be seen objects of taste and vertu, not precisely those things which have acquired for themselves the technical terms of nic-nacs, and serve but to please the eye or amuse the fancy; but, on the contrary, things which appealed to the mind through various associations--small cabinet pictures of great value, bronzes from Herculanum, marbles from Greece and Rome, beautiful specimens of the cinque cento workmanship, a little Venus from the hands of John of Bologna, and two or three tables of exquisite Florentine mosaic.
Lying on a sofa, near the open window, which was curtained, if we may use the term, with manifold odoriferous flowers, habited in a dressing-gown of rich embroidered silk, and with his fine countenance full of eager interest in what he was reading, lay Everard Lieberg, with a book in his hand, on which his eyes were so intently fixed, that he did not seem to observe the opening of the door, till his servant pronounced the name of Morley Ernstein.
Starting up from the sofa, he laid down the book, and grasped his young friend's hand, welcoming him to London, and congratulating him on the full recovery which his looks bespoke. The conversation then turned to Morley's plans and purposes, as it had done with Mr. Hamilton. But Lieberg declared that he had already laid out half-a-dozen schemes for Ernstein, which he must insist upon being executed. There were beautiful horses to be bought, there were races to be attended, there were singers to be heard, there were pictures to be seen, there was a wonderful mechanical invention which brought into action new powers in the physical world, there was a splendid orator in a chapel in Sloane Street, there was the loveliest woman in all Europe in the third box of the first tier of the opera, there was a new pamphlet on the immortality of the soul, and there was a romance of Balzac's, which seemed written for the express purpose of proving, that--
"Nought is everything, and everything is nought."
The multitude, the diversity, the opposition of the various matters which Lieberg proposed for his pursuit, at once bewildered and amused his young friend. But there was a fascination about his eloquence that was scarcely to be resisted. He contrived to describe everything in such a manner, as to place it in the most attractive aspect to his hearer, seeing, with a skill that seemed almost intuitive, the exact nature and character of his tastes and feelings, and shaping his account accordingly. As an instance, his description of the lady, whom he had beheld on two successive nights at the opera, was such, that Morley almost fancied he must have seen Juliet Carr, although, to the best of his belief, she was nearly two hundred miles from London.
"I shall get bewildered with all that I have to see, to do, and to think of," replied Morley, "and so I fear must leave one half of your fine plans unexecuted. But at all events, we must classify them somewhat better, for you have propounded them in rather a heterogeneous form."