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(The British Library)

MORLEY ERNSTEIN

OR THE

TENANTS OF THE HEART

A ROMANCE

BY G.P.R. JAMES ESQ.

BRUSSELS.

MELINE, CANS AND CO.

M DCCC XLII

MORLEY ERNSTEIN

OR

THE TENANTS OF THE HEART.

CHAPTER I.

"Pouvons-nous pas dire, qu'il n'y a rien en nous, pendant cette prison terrestre, purement, ni corporel ni spirituel?" asks good old Montaigne, and certain it is that in many an act where we imagine the body alone takes part, the spirit has as great a share; and in many a thought where the mind seems to divest herself of clay, the impulse was given by the body, not the soul. But besides the contention between the corporeal and spiritual part of our nature, and the sort of swindling that goes on on both sides, he that looks into his own heart must acknowledge with him of old, that there seem to be two spirits within us. I do not only mean two spirits distinguished by their promptings to good and evil, but two principles separate in their nature, in their objects, and in their ultimate dwelling-place, the one tending to the earth, the other aspiring to the heavens; the one the principle of animal existence, the other the principle of immortal life; the one shared with the brutes that perish, the other that essence which raises us above them here and hereafter. What shall we call these two spirits? How shall we distinguish them, the one from the other, in speaking of them hereafter? Let us name the higher and the purer one, the spirit of the soul; and call the other, the spirit of the flesh; for both are distinct from mere intellect, which each uses as an agent, as each gains the ascendancy, or appeals to as a judge when the struggle is nearly equal. It is upon this struggle between these two principles that turns the greater part of each man's moral history.

One of the strangest points in that contest is, that the spirit of the soul, as we have called the one, appeals less frequently to the intellect than her earthly sister, leaving it, in general, to the latter, as if for her uses in this earth the powers of intellect were given, while the soul obtains its impulses from other sources, and, marked out for a higher destiny, receives winged inspirations from the world to which it tends--faith, conviction, sentiment, feeling, conscience;--and oh, how often does that better spirit seize the happy moment to open the eyes which all our powers of mind could not unclose, and strip the world and all its pleasures of the delusions which no force of intellect has been equal to dispel!

At the age of one-and-twenty years--It is a beautiful age, full of the spring, with all the vigour of manhood, without one touch of its decay; with all the fire of youth, without one touch of its feebleness! Oh, one-and-twenty! bright one-and-twenty!--wilt thou never come back to me again? No, never! The cord of the bow has been so often drawn that it has lost its elasticity; there have been a thousand flowers cast away that have withered in the dust of Time's sandy path; there have been a thousand fruits tasted that have left but the rind in my hand; there have been a thousand travel stains acquired that never can be washed off till the journey is done. That which has been lost, and that which has been gained, have both been gathered into the two baskets of the past; and whatever the future may have in store, one-and-twenty, with its many hopes, its few fears, its buoyancy of spirit, its elasticity of limb, its eagerness of expectation, its activity of pursuit, its aspirations, its desires, its faith, its confidence, its frankness, its garden of visionary flowers, and its atmosphere of misty light, can never, never come back to us, were we to whistle till we broke our hearts. No, no; in the sad arithmetic of years, multiply by what numbers you will, you can never get at one-and-twenty more than once.

At the age of one-and-twenty years, Morley Ehrenstein, or Ernstein, as it had been contracted, a gentleman--descended, as his name evinces, from a very old German family, who had made themselves a home in a foreign land, some three centuries before--sat in one of the large chambers of an English country-house, not many miles from the good town of Doncaster. No one tenanted the chamber but himself, and though it was a cheerful day of summer, and the room was one of a bright and sunny aspect, there was a degree of melancholy on the young man's countenance, which might be difficult to account for, if we did not look a little into his heart, and pause for a moment on his previous history. Let him gaze then at the ceiling, and study the quaint arabesques into which the plaster of Paris had been drawn; let him lean his head upon his hand, and examine the pretty nothings with which his table is covered; let him gaze out of the window into the far distance, as if he were about to paint a portrait of the weather-cock on the village church; but let you and I, dear reader, first put our friend into a microscope, and note down exactly every limb and feature and sinew, as if we were true Kirbys, anatomising a moth; and then let us look in the old almanacks, to discover some of the antecedents of his present state.

The young man, then, of whom we speak, was above the middle height, powerful in limb, and though so young, with but little of the slightness of youth remaining. Health, and strength, and activity, were to be traced in every swelling muscle, and those who regard what is merely corporeal, might well pronounce him a fine animal, even when at rest. When in activity, however--when hunting, swimming, leaping, or performing any of those rude exercises whereof Englishmen are so fond, and also so proud, with the glowing cheek and expanded nostril, the flashing eye, and the strong rounded outline of every limb, he looked like a fierce young horse, before the bit has taught it the force of any other power than its own strength. In every moment of excitement the animal spirit, the spirit of the flesh, started up strong and bold within him; his veins seemed to be filled with molten fire, his heart to be full of eagerness and impetuosity, his whole mind one active enthusiasm. He felt within him a thirst for unceasing action of any and every kind, and had it not been for certain qualities, which we shall notice hereafter, he would have been merely one of those who look upon all things round them, as objects on which to employ their reckless energy, and life itself but as a child's plaything.

He was young, dear reader, very young, and had neither learned from the bitter teaching of years nor from any sudden and sad experience, that the face must be, as it were, a veil to hide the countenance of the heart. There are few men who reach thirty, without more or less becoming hypocrites, and still fewer women; at least, as far as the expression of the features goes. There are some with whom the waters of time are like those of certain springs, and gradually petrify the face into a mask. There are others who retain their pliability of features, but reverse the action; cover hate and sorrow with a smile, or conceal joy and satisfaction with an air of icy indifference. There are some endowed by nature with lineaments of marble, and some who, by habit and by art, form for themselves an India-rubber countenance, which will stretch to whatsoever they require.

Morley Ernstein was none of these. He was very young, as we have said, and nature had made his looks the reflection of all that passed in his heart. His face was as a clear stream, through which one sees to the very bottom. He had never learned to rule its expressions, and those impulses which were but too apt to sway his actions, had still more power over his countenance.

Why then did he now look so sad? Women will imagine that he was in love, for they are all inclined to say, with Alfred de Musset, that--

"La vie est un sommeil, l'amour en est le rêve."

Men--but especially Frenchmen--may be inclined to suppose, with Balzac's gamblers, when they first beheld Raphael, that there was, under his melancholy aspect, "quelque horrible mystère;" and imagine it proceeded from some "douleur inouïe." Neither of those suppositions, however, would be correct. There was no one point in his history or situation, that should have produced anything like gloom.

Morley Ernstein was born to wealth and honour; his father had died early, leaving but one child, to the care of a fond but a wise mother, who, though young and beautiful at her husband's death, kept, throughout the rest of her life, the colours of mourning in her garments and in her heart. Some six years before the time of which we now speak, she too had left this world for another state of being, and her son had fallen into hands of guardians, somewhat strict, but still prudent and kind. They had seen that his talents were great, that his mind approached, if it did not absolutely reach, the height of genius, and they had taken care that it should have such cultivation as the land afforded. They were as conscientious with the young baronet's property as with his intellect; and the old family-house had been left in the care of two faithful good women, who had withered in the service of his ancestors, and who now shewed themselves scrupulous in maintaining everything in the same precise order, and clean propriety which had been kept up during the life of the lady of the mansion.

The guardians of Morley Ernstein had resisted all his entreaties to let him pass the vacations of school and college in his ancestral house; but on the day that he was one-and-twenty, a carriage and four horses were at the door of his temporary abode before six in the morning, and ere night he was in the dwelling of his youth. Everything had been prepared to receive him, and he had hastened from room to room, while all the moonlight joy of memory lit up each chamber with associations from the past. He slept little, and rose on the following day, to go through the accounts of guardians and executors, and he found, as paper after paper was laid before him, new cause to applaud their care and wisdom--new reason to look upon his situation as one of the brightest that man could fill. The subsequent night he slept soundly; but now, when he rose on the day we have mentioned, which was the one that succeeded, he sat in the large drawing-room, where his mother used to pass the morning, with his head resting on his hand, the broad, fine forehead contracted, the bright dark eyes full of melancholy, the corners of his mouth turned down, gazing at things he did not see, and forgetting all the bright expectations of youth, and all the joys that hope had spread out before him.

Of what was it that he thought? Was it of his mother? No! Time had healed the only wound that fate, within his own memory, had inflicted on him; and his thoughts were of no external kind whatever: It was that the spirit of the soul then, for the first time, made her voice heard strongly. She might have whispered before, but now she spoke aloud. It was as a warning at the gates of life: it was as if some hand, for a moment, drew back the glittering veil with which pale reality covers her wrinkled front, and had shewn him, instead of the bright young features he expected to see, nothing but deformity and age. Unhappy is it--at the time, most unhappy--for the man, in whose mind age and youth can change places, even for an hour. God wills us, while we are young, to view things youngly, and when the thoughts of age force themselves upon us in youth, we are like the living clasped in the cold arms of the dead.

Such, then, were the sensations of Morley Ernstein, as he sat in the house of his fathers, master thereof, master of himself, master of fortune, station, youth, strength, and expectation! Oh, how he had longed for that hour! What bright visions had risen before his eyes, of enjoyment to come! How he had strode in imagination over every field--how he had visited every cottage--how he had consoled the old servants for his long absence--how he had made in fancy every change that he had devised in boyhood. He had dreamed bright dreams, though most innocent ones; and now the dream was accomplished--he was there, with nothing but his own will to control him in any act! Yes, the dream was accomplished, but it was ended too! Whenever we grasp life's flowers with too hot a hand, they are sure to wither almost ere they reach our bosom. He had not felt as much joy as he had expected; he had been happy certainly, but he had discovered that even happiness is not the bright thing he had thought it; and now he sat and mused, the spirit of the soul seeming to tell him, that thus he would still find it throughout the whole of life; that there is a rich ingredient wanting in the cup of mortal joy which never can be found on earth.

There was a dull oppression on his heart that he could not account for; there was a voice rang in his ear, telling of the emptiness of all human things. "But a few short years ago," he thought, "here moved my father, filled with plans and purposes, hopes and expectations,--here crowded round him the gay, the bright, the beautiful, the wise, the good--here honour waited, wealth supported, renown followed him--here, too, my mother spent days of joy and sorrow--here she looked with tenderness upon my cradle--here she watched with pride my growing years--here she often talked of the bright future with her beloved son. And they are both gone: their shadows no longer cross the household floor; the roof tree no longer echoes back their voices; their tongues are silent, and their smiles are cold; and the place where they once dwelt, now knows them no more. Thus, too, shall it be with me ere many years have passed; my joys, my hopes, my affections shall soon be in the dust with theirs."

Such were his thoughts as he sat there, though the room was full of sunshine--though the object before his eyes were bright--though one-and-twenty years were all that he had numbered. Judge then, dear reader, whether the spirit of the soul was not strong within him, thus to rise and reprove the animal spirit, even at the very threshold of youth. Each was indeed powerful: the elements of earthly and immortal existence had been poured into him profusely; the eager, impassioned, vehement being of this world, was met by the calm, grand, mysterious essence of a higher sphere; and sometimes the impetuous energy of the one, sometimes the stern majesty of the other, gained the victory, and ruled the course of life.

CHAPTER II.

We will have done with the philosophy of the human heart; we will talk no more of abstract sensations--at least, for the present; we will enter into no further investigations of causes and effects; but will tell a simple story to the end; never deviating into discussions--except when it suits us; for, as the gentle reader is well aware that resolutions, whether made by man or woman, are intended from the very first to be broken, it would be hard upon a poor writer to force him to keep his better than kings, or ministers, or philosophers.

The thoughtful fit into which Morley Ernstein had fallen did not last long. The entrance of a servant dispelled it in a moment; and starting up, as if half ashamed of the gloom that had fallen upon him, he resumed the tone of ordinary life. Youth, with its consciousness, feels as if man's bosom were but a glass case, where thoughts may be examined like curious insects, and the young man doubted not that the servant would see all that was passing within if he cleared not his brow of the shadows that covered it.

"Bring me round a horse!" he said; "I will ride out." And after taking his hat, his gloves, and his cane, he went into the old portico before the door, and sat down on one of the stone benches which flanked it on either side. The air was warm and balmy, for it was the month of May, the period of the year in which Morley had been born. There is surely something in the season of our birth which transfuses itself into our character, and, I have sometimes been inclined to think, influences our fate. Byron was born in the dark and stormy winter; Napoleon, in the fiery and blazing month of August.

Morley had first seen the light in the fitful spring; and now, in that month, when very often the heat of summer and the cold of winter struggle with each other on alternate days, especially in the land that gave him birth, he sat and watched the bright sunshine and the dark cloud chase each other over the blue sky. The scene impressed itself upon his heart and gave its hue to his feelings, for he was one of those whose bosoms are like a deep, clear lake, reflecting vividly the aspect of nature, except when the demon of the tempest sweeps over it with his ruffling wing. He felt himself falling into a new fit of thought, but resisted the inclination; and when the horse was brought round, he sprang at once into the saddle, and struck the flank with his heel. The animal darted forward, but instead of turning its head towards the gate the rider took his way at full gallop across the park, leaped the enclosure at a bound, and was soon out of the old servant's sight, who beheld him depart, with the exclamation--"He is but a boy after all!"

There was as much envy and admiration as anything else in the old man's speech; for who would not be a boy if they could?--who would not go back to the freshness of early years?--who would not shake off the burden of age and its heavy thoughts? At that very moment Morley was flying from thoughts too old for his years; the animal spirit had resumed its sway, and, in the fiery career of the high-bred beast he rode, the energies of his own corporeal nature found exercise and joy.

A little accident happened, however, almost at the outset of his ride, which checked the speed at which he was flying over the country. We have said he leaped the enclosure of the park at a bound; but he certainly did so without thinking that any one might be upon the high road at the other side. Such was the case, however; and, as Morley Ernstein darted over the fence, he perceived a lady and a gentleman on horseback, riding gently along.

The sudden and unexpected apparition of a mounted horseman at full speed, where there had been nothing but solitude the moment before, made the lady start, but it made her horse start still more; and being of that race of animals that is restive without being spirited, the beast plunged, reared, and would have fallen backwards, but, as quick as light, Morley was upon his feet by the lady's side, and with her bridle in his firm, manly grasp. The horse became quiet instantly; it seemed as if the animal felt at once that it could not resist; and though it passaged away from him who held it, it no longer tried to rear with that strong determination of crushing its fair rider which it had shewn at first.

The lady, however, agitated with all that had happened, slipped from the saddle, quickly but gracefully, and of course Morley Ernstein aided her to the best of his abilities, apologizing for frightening her horse, and assuring her that the animal was now quiet, that the danger was over, and adding a multitude of other things of the same kind, in a breath.

Our measures of time are all false and absurd together; we might find a thousand better clocks than any that have ever been carried up into the sky by a church steeple. Thoughts, feelings, passions, events--these are the real moral time-keepers. What is to me the ticking of a pendulum? There is many a five minutes, as they are called when measured by that false scale, that form two-thirds of a lifetime. One fortnight of existence has withered more than twenty years, cast down the barrier between youth and age, and dried up the fountains of the heart, like the simoon.

It was not exactly thus with Morley Ernstein and the lady; but the brief moments in which all passed that I have just narrated, comprised for the young gentleman a world of other things besides. She was young and very beautiful.--Is not that enough to load the wings of a single minute with the thoughts of years, for a young man of one-and-twenty? But that was not all; hers was the sort of beauty that he had always most admired, most thought of, most wondered at. It was all gentleness and brightness, but withal resplendent with high feeling and thought. It was the mixture that we so seldom see of all that is lovely in mere corporeal form and colouring: the rich contour, the flowing lines, the warmth but softness of hue, the contrasted tints of the hair, the eyes, the cheeks, the forehead, and the lips, with the lofty, yet gentle, the tender, yet deep in expression. The young horseman had remarked all this in a moment, and he had seen that beautiful face agitated, that graceful form rendered more graceful by the effort to keep her seat upon the vicious beast that bore her. At the same time, the morning sun shone, mellowed through the foliage of a tree over head, and cast that rich mysterious yellow light upon the whole scene which is only produced when the sun-shine falls through the green leaves that owe their brief and strange existence to his glorious beams. That light seemed to give a peculiar lustre to her face--a something that the youth, in his fond enthusiasm, could have fancied unearthly, had not the soft hand that rested upon his as he aided her to dismount, and the deep-drawn sigh of apprehension relieved, told him that she was but a being of the same nature as himself. It was all done in a moment, as I have said, and the manifold thoughts, or we may call them impressions, which took place in his bosom, were like the ripples of a moonlight sea; a thousand bright things received all at once into the mind.

Scarcely, however, had Morley Ernstein time to utter the few words which have been mentioned when the lady's companion interposed, saying--"At this time of the year sir, one does not expect to see people flying over a park fence like madmen. The periodical season of insanity--I mean the hunting season--is at an end, and I do not wonder at the horse being surprised and alarmed."

Morley turned his eyes suddenly to the speaker's face; but he was an old man, with grey hair, and the youth had a certain foolish reverence for age, which was much inculcated amongst those weak people, our ancestors; though it has given way very generally now, under the influence of improvement and the diffusion of knowledge. He refrained, therefore, and strangled an angry reply between his teeth, merely saying--

"I am extremely sorry I have alarmed the lady, and trust she will forgive me. You still look frightened," he continued, addressing her with a voice in which some young timidity, and the slight agitation of admiration mixed strangely with a consciousness, not so much of varied powers as of high purpose and noble feelings; "you still look frightened, and somewhat faint. Were it not better for you to repose for a moment at my house, hard by?"

"At your house!" said the gentleman, with peculiar emphasis, and gazing at him from head to foot; "I thank you, sir, but the lady can very well pursue her ride. The horse, too, will be perfectly quiet, unless he be again startled, and it is not reasonable to expect two such pleasant occurrences in one day."

The young lady bowed her head with a smile that seemed intended and fully sufficient to compensate for the harsh coldness of her companion. "I am not faint," she said--"a little frightened; but I can well go on." She thanked him, too, for his kindness, in a somewhat lower tone; not so low, indeed, as to be unheard by either of the two who stood beside her, but still softened, and with somewhat of timidity in her manner, as if she felt that what she said to the one might not be pleasing to the other.

Morley aided her to remount, and gave her the rein, for her companion made no effort to assist her. As he did so, he gazed for one instant in her face, and his eyes met the deep blue heavenly light of hers, pouring through the dark lashes, like the first dawn of morning through the clouds of night. It was but for an instant, and bowing her head once more, she rode on, leaving him standing on the road, and marvelling still at the bright vision which had thus crossed his path, and vanished. Who has not, in his childhood, seen a shooting star cross the sky and disappear, on a bright autumn night?--and who has not then gazed long into the wide vacant heaven, to see if the shining wanderer would not appear again? Thus gazed Morley Ernstein after the fair being that had just left him, with that sort of admiration in which wonder has so great a share.

He stood motionless, his horse's bridle over one arm, his cane drooping from his wrist, and his eyes fixed upon the receding figures, till they reached an angle of the road. They were riding slowly, and by no movement in either did it appear that they gave another thought to what had occurred--to that momentary meeting which had furnished him with so many thoughts. He had no reason to suppose they would. Perhaps, indeed, with man's true perversity, Morley might have deemed it not quite feminine if the lady had turned her head as she rode away; but yet he was mortified that she did not do so; and sighed to think that he should most likely never see her more. At the angle of the road, however--it was, perhaps, some three hundred yards distant from the spot where he stood, far enough, in short, to render features indistinct, but not to hide the gestures of the body--the two riders directed their course to the left, and then--but only for a single instant, with a glance withdrawn as soon as given--the lady turned her face towards the scene of the little incident which had delayed her on her way. It was but for an instant, we have said; but Morley felt that in that instant she must have seen him standing and gazing after her, and in his young enthusiasm he could not but fancy that she must have seen, too, the admiration she had excited in his bosom.

Who could she be? he asked himself--Who and what? Was she the old man's daughter? He did not like to think it was so. He persuaded himself that it was not. There was not the slightest resemblance between them; his aspect was harsh, and hers was gentle; his eyes were dim, and hers were bright; his brow was brown and wrinkled, hers was fair and smooth; his hair was gray, and hers--. But as he thus thought he smiled at himself, seeing that all the differences he had found might be solely those of age. "'Tis but that he is old and she is young," he thought; "but no! there is no resemblance, and then the voices were as different as the croak of the raven and the song of the lark--the voice which is almost always hereditary."

If not his daughter, who could she be? was the next question; and as there is always in the bosom of every one, a ready devil to suggest that which may torment us most, he next inquired, "May she not be his wife?" In England, however, it is not so common as in other countries--where marriages are mercantile transactions, and the altar and the commune often become a mere slave-market--for men to marry girls who might be their grand-daughters; and Morley Ernstein soon determined that she could not be his wife. She might be cousin, niece, connexion--anything, in short: but neither his daughter nor his wife. His daughter! No, she was too lovely, too gentle, too bright, for the same blood to run in her veins, and in the cold icehouse of her companion's heart. His wife!--Heaven and earth! it was impossible!

The young man mounted his horse, and rode on, but more slowly than before. The very sight that he had seen had calmed him, for such is generally the first effect of very exquisite beauty. There is power in it as well as loveliness--we are impressed as much as attracted; it awakens admiration before it excites passion, and, with love as with the ocean, the calm precedes the storm. He rode on, then, thoughtfully, and many were the workings of his spirit within him.

Not long after, he reached a village, which stood upon his own property; the cottagers were all people who had known him in his youth, and though they had not seen him for six years, they all remembered him well. It was, by this time, the peasant's hour of dinner, but some one caught a sight of the young landlord as he entered the place, and the tiding spread like lightning. Every door had its occupants, and low courtesies and respectful bows greeted him as he advanced. There was a kindliness in Morley's heart, that would not let him deal coldly with any one; and, though he would fain have gone on, thinking of the engrossing subject that had taken hold of him, he could not resist the good cottagers' looks of recognition; and, dismounting from his horse, he called a boy to lead it through the village, while, walking from door to door, he spoke a few words to his humble friends.

"God bless him!" cried one, as soon as he had gone on; "he is a nice young gentleman."

"He is very like his father," observed another. "I remember his father well."

"He has got his mother's beautiful eyes, though," said a third. "Well, I do think she was the prettiest creature I ever yet did see!"

At the fourth or fifth cottage an idea seemed to strike Morley Ernstein suddenly, and he asked if any of the inhabitants thereof had seen a lady and a gentleman pass through the place on horseback, intending to follow up that enquiry by demanding who they were. But he got no satisfaction there. The cottager had been out in the fields, his wife had been cooking the dinner, and no such persons as the young gentleman described had been seen by either. He put the same question again and again at other houses, but no tidings were to be obtained; and, vexed and disappointed, he returned to his home and made enquiries there.

To the old servants he described the gentleman he had met with accurately enough; on the lady he would not venture to say much, for like all Englishmen he was keenly sensitive to a laugh, and feared to awaken the least feeling of ridicule, even in the mind of a dependent. He dwelt upon the person and dress of the horseman at large; but in regard to the lady, added only that she was young and handsome.

Human nature is very obtuse to description, and we seldom if ever find any one who either attends to or applies the details that we give, respecting any object which we wish to call up before the mind's eye by means of the ear. Do not let poets or historians ever believe that, by the lengthened descriptions they give, the reader ever becomes impressed with the very scene or person that they themselves behold. Oh, no! the reader manufactures a scene of his own, out of some of the writer's words and many of his own imaginations or memories; or fabricates a personage out of his own fancies and predilections; but both scene and personage as unlike that which we have wished to represent as possible. Thus was it, too, with Morley Ernstein and his servants. One declared that the persons he had seen must be Mr. Ferdinand Beckford and his young wife. Mr. Beckford was the good priest of a neighbouring parish, and was just six-and-twenty years of age. Another vowed that the horseman must be Mr. Thomas Ogden, Member of Parliament for the town hard by, and the lady must be his wife. Mrs. Ogden was somewhere between forty and fifty, and though she still preserved a pretty face, her person was as round as a tub of Dutch butter. A third insisted that it was Lawyer Chancery; but Ernstein knew the lawyer, and replied--"Why he is six feet high, and I told you this person was short."

He saw that it was in vain to enquire further in that quarter, at least; and he now resolved to pursue another plan, to reverse the course of proceeding which he had proposed to follow, when he had first arrived, and to visit immediately every gentleman's house within twenty miles. His eager spirit would bear no delay, and before night he had called on five or six of the principal personages in the neighbourhood. All the gentlemen around declared that it was evident Sir Morley Ernstein intended to be very sociable; and all the ladies, who had daughters to marry, pronounced him a very charming young man; but Morley did not find what he sought.

He dined, wandered out through his beautiful park, hurried here and there till bed-time, and then cast himself down to repose, but found it not, thinking only of the places where he would call the next day, and the chances of his finding the fair girl who had so much excited his imagination. In short, the spirit of the animal was triumphant in his bosom for the time. Let us guard, however, the expression well against mistake. Do not let it be supposed that one evil thought found place in his bosom at that moment. He was far too young, and fresh in heart, to admit aught to the council chamber of his bosom, which the fair girl ho had seen might not herself have witnessed and approved, even supposing her to be all that her countenance bespoke her--pure, and bright, and holy, as the spirits of a better world. No! but we still say that the spirit of the animal was triumphant--the eager, active, impetuous spirit, the same that leads the lion to rush after his prey, the same that carries the warrior through the battle field--the spirit of this world's things, of mortal hopes, and passions, and affections--the spirit which, in all its shapes, in all its forms, in camps and cities, courts and cabinets, gaining both high worldly renown and the visionary immortality of fame, is still but an animal energy--the spirit of dust and ashes.

Early the next morning he rose and pursued his eager course; another and another round of hours and visits succeeded, till at length he had called on every one that he could hear or think of, within the reach of a lady's riding, and yet he had neither seen, nor obtained the least intelligence of the horseman and his fair companion. The disappointment but excited him the more for some days, and he left no means untried to relieve himself from the irritable curiosity into which he had wrought himself.

Still, all excitements come to an end; and in time he learned to feel angry at himself for what he began to call boyish enthusiasm. He felt somewhat disgusted with the life of the country, however; and as the London season was then at its height, and everybody was carrying up their stock of faults and follies to that great mart of wickedness and vanity, from the less profitable markets of the country, he determined to see what was passing in the metropolis, and to take his part in all its energetic idleness. Be it said to his honour that he knew London well, and loved it not; but he had seen it only as a boy, under the somewhat rigid tutelage of others, and he was now to see it as a man, master of himself and of a princely fortune.

CHAPTER III.

Scarcely had Morley's visits in the country been paid, when first came four invitations to dinner, and then a grand ball was determined on by a lady, who lived near the county town, and had four sons and six daughters. Who can tell whether Morley Ernstein's appearance in the neighbourhood had aught to do with all these gay affairs? Old Miss Cumbertown, who had seen sixty and more drying summers and freezing winters pass over her, till all the sweeter essences of her nature were parched up to a dry haricot, muttered and grinned at all she heard, and prognosticated that the young gentleman would not be caught yet awhile. She knew well what it was to be disappointed in the attempt to catch a lover; and when she heard, some days after this, that the young master of Morley Court had declined all invitations, announcing that he was about to go to town on the very day the first dinner-party was to take place, she grinned a thousand times more. It is so pleasant to see other people visited by the same misfortunes that have fallen upon ourselves!

In the meantime the young gentleman was totally unconscious that there was anything like a design upon him in any of the five invitations, or that he was creating the least disappointment in the inviters; although they did not fail to believe--for cunning always fancies itself opposed by cunning--that he partly saw through their devices.

"Oh, he gives himself great airs!" said one.

"I suppose we must beg his company in very humble terms," cried another.

But, as we have before declared, Morley was quite unconscious of. offence, and never once recollected the fact either of his having the command of a number of votes for the county, or of his being an eligible match for any lady in the land. Indeed, he thought not at all of any man's daughter in Europe, except, indeed, of her whose birth, parentage, and education, he had not been able to discover.

After he had settled the period of his journey, the next thing was to settle the mode of travelling. It was very natural that, with great wealth in possession, which he had never been allowed fully to enjoy, he should dream of tasting the sweets of it in every possible manner, and that the chariot-and-four should first present itself to his imagination, as the only fitting way for him to seek the capital. He had very nearly given orders for the horses, and had visions of going at least thirteen miles an hour. Rapidity of motion is one of the inherent joys of youth and vigour--it may be called, almost, a necessity, and Morley was one of those who enjoy to the highest extent that peculiar sensation which is produced by the rapid passing of the fair objects of nature before the eye; tower and town, and church-steeple, and green fields, and bright rivers, and tall trees, and rich woods, resting just long enough upon the organs of vision to call up sweet, but undefined imaginations, and then passing away--like distant music which swells and falls upon the ear, bringing back vaguely airs that we have heard elsewhere, and leaving fancy to play them to an end.

He forgot, however, to give the order for the horses at the hour of dinner, and afterwards he strolled out into the country round, and visited the cottages of some of the peasantry who were reported to be in a state of great poverty. He now saw real misery, for the first time, and it had a powerful effect upon him. We have not space, dear reader, to enter into the details; to paint the pale face of squalid misery, and the eager anxious eyes of hopeless destitution. Suffice it, that Morley Ernstein was young; his heart had not been hardened in the furnace of the world, and it was not originally formed of that adamantine stuff, called selfishness. He was not, as some, lavish in his bounty, from mere want of any principle of action whatsoever; but he relieved the unhappy people fully, and on his return home, gave such directions, as to prevent their falling back into misery again during his absence, except by their own fault.

After this was done, he sat and thought, and ended, by ordering a servant to go to the neighbouring town, and secure him a place in the stage-coach to London. His scheme of travelling had been changed by his visit to the poor; but not in the manner, or from the motives that many persons may imagine. It was not that he proposed to save small sums out of a princely fortune, for the purpose of devoting the whole of that fortune to the poor, for Morley knew right well that the industrious mechanic, the artisan, the farmer, the builder--all, in short, who contribute by the labour of their hands and minds to the convenience, comfort, and welfare of their fellow-creatures, have a first claim upon those to whom God has entrusted the distribution of great wealth. He believed that though the poor, the honest and worthy poor, must be supplied, must be cared for--that though it is a duty to make up, by active charity, for the inequalities and accidents that the fundamental constitution of society, and the very nature of man must always produce--still the industrious of all classes have their great primary right, which ought to be attended to. It was not that the actual sight of misery made him purpose to deny himself anything that was rational and just in the station in which he was placed, or resolve to refrain from any expense which might encourage the industrious in all classes, but that sight had called up the spirit of the soul to speak within him, and to check the animal spirit which had fired his imagination. After he returned from those poor cottages, he found no pleasure in the idea of the gay postilions and foaming horses; his mind took a sadder, a more thoughtful tone. He felt almost ashamed of the bright eagerness of pampered life in the presence of the dim eyes and tear-stained cheeks of misery. His whole scheme changed. "I will go to the capital," he said, "quietly and modestly. I will not present myself in that gay place as the rich man, coming to enjoy, but as the thoughtful man, going to examine and to consider. I will not, indeed, conceal myself; but I will retire rather than advance, till I have good cause to do so. I will seek to find friends rather than to make acquaintances, and rather than simply endeavour to spend my income, I will endeavour to spend it well."

Nothing occurred to check the spirit of the soul, and he continued in the same mood till the stage-coach passed by the gates of his park, the next day. A number of passengers covered the outside of the vehicle, so that there was no room for him in that part which Englishmen always choose in preference to the interior, as if they loved the dust of summer, the rain of autumn and spring, and the cold winds of winter, better than any other of the enjoyments of those seasons. To foreigners this seems an extraordinary taste; but the origin of it probably is that the Englishman, who pushes almost all his affections to extravagance, loves, with a vehemence that few other people can feel, the free air of heaven. Morley would willingly have changed places with the poorest traveller on the outside of the coach; but as that could not be done, he took his seat in solitude in the interior, where he found plenty of room for thought, there being nobody within it but himself.

The coach rolled on with a celerity which no one who has not travelled in one of those small, inconvenient, but wonderfully rapid, vehicles, can imagine to be produced by any animal under the sun. The nearer objects flew past like lightning, the further ones kept gradually changing their place with a quickness proportioned to their respective distances from the coach, which, for its part, like the mind of a vain man, seemed the centre of a circle round which all other objects were running; and Morley's impetuosity was well nigh satisfied with the rate of progression at which they were going.

After all, movement is the grand principle of animal life; it runs in our veins, it beats in our hearts, it advances with our ideas, it enters into every change, is more rapid in youth, slower in infancy and age, fails as desires are extinguished or objects wanting, grows dull in sickness, pauses in sleep, and ends alone in death.

After driving on at the same pace for three-quarters of an hour, during which, Morley gave himself up to the sort of dreamy pleasure which I have mentioned, of feeling himself whirled on through a thousand beautiful objects, the coach stopped to change horses, and one of the travellers from the outside came in, and took his seat by the previously solitary tenant of the interior.

"It is as hot as if it were summer on the outside," he said, addressing nobody, "and the seat I had got was so unpleasant, that I am not sorry to quit it."

Morley did not answer; but--with the sort of habitual coldness which affects almost all Englishmen, in part pride, in part timidity, in part contempt for all other beings than themselves, in part fear that others should entertain the same contempt for them--he sat silent, gazing out of the window, following his own meditations, and quite willing that his travelling companion should follow his likewise.

The personage who had entered was not one, however, that had anything repulsive in his manners or appearance. He was tall, gracefully formed, with an air of distinction, and a countenance often full of fire and animation, although the habitual expression was that of quick but easy-flowing thought. His brow was high and fine, his eyes peculiarly large and bright, and his hair strongly curled; the only feature in his face which could be termed even not good, was the mouth, the lips being somewhat thick and heavy. His complexion was dark, and the skin very brown, apparently with exposure to the air and sun, but the whole exterior was extremely pleasing; and had Morley looked at him at all, he would in all probability have spoken in return; but the young gentleman did not look at him, and the stranger, after pausing for a moment, spoke again--resolved, it would seem, to make some impression upon his temporary companion.

"Pray, whose house is that?" he demanded, pointing to a handsome mansion on the right.

"I do not know," replied Morley, turning round, and gazing at him, for the first time.

"Indeed!" said the stranger; "I thought you were well acquainted with this country. The coachman told me that you were Sir Something Ernstein, and that the park, at the gates of which we took you up, belongs to you."

Morley smiled. "It is all very true," he answered; "but, nevertheless, I do not know. I have not been in this part of England for six or seven years."

The stranger mused; but between two men not absolutely repulsive in themselves, nor particularly disposed by any circumstances mutually to repel each other--the poles of whose minds, in short, are not reversed--conversation soon establishes itself after a few words have been spoken. A single syllable will often do the whole with people whose characters are well balanced, and a word act like the hair trigger of a pistol, upon which hangs the fate of a life.

Oh, how strange and complicated is the web of God's will! How the smallest, the most pitiful, the most empty of things, by his great and wise volition, act their part in mighty changes! How a look, a tone, a sound, a pebble in our path, a grain of dust in our eyes, a headache, a fit of gloom, a caprice, a desire, may not only change the whole current of one man's existence, but affect the being of states and empires, and alter human destinies to the end of time! The present state of France, the whole mass of facts, circumstances, incidents, accidents, and events, which are there going on, may all be owing to a lady, whom I knew well, having splashed her stocking fifty years ago.

"As how, in the name of Heaven?" demands the reader.

Thus! She was going out of her house with a relation in the town of Douai, when, carelessly putting her foot on a stone, she splashed her stocking. She went back to change it; the delay occupied a quarter of an hour. When she went on again, she met, at the corner of the Place, a man, since too famous in history, then scarcely known as anything but a clever fop. His name was Francis Maximilian Robespierre. Instead of going on, he turned with her and her relation, and walked up and down the Place with them for half an hour. In one of the houses hard by, a debating society was in the act of canvassing some political question. As they passed to and fro, Robespierre listened at the door from time to time, and at length, pronouncing the debaters to be all fools together, he rushed in to set them right. From that moment, he entered vehemently into all the fiery discussions which preceded the revolution, in which he had never taken part before, and grasped at power, which opened the doors of the cage, and let out the tiger in his heart. Thus, had the lady not splashed her stocking, she would not have met the future tyrant; he would have pursued his way, and would not have turned back to the Place; he would never have heard the debate that first called him into action, for he was going to quit Douai the next day, and who can say how that one fact, in the infinite number of its combinations with other things, might have affected the whole social world at present?

The stranger mused, as we have said, but after a moment's thought, he replied, in a meditative tone--

"How strange is the sensation when, after a long absence from any place, we return to it suddenly! How different everything appears!--how shrunk, and changed, and withered, seem many objects that we thought beautiful and bright!--how many a light gone out!--how many a sweet sound silent! I believe that it is very happy for us that in point of time we cannot go back again, as we can in space."

"Nay, I do not think so," answered Morley, growing interested in his companion's conversation; "I cannot, indeed, judge from experience, but I should imagine that many an old man would willingly return to the days of his youth; that every man, indeed, when he finds life beginning to lose its energies, health failing, the muscle relaxing, the eye growing dim, the limbs feeble, would willingly go back to the time when all were in their perfection."

"They would do so willingly, beyond all doubt," replied his companion; "but whether they would do so wisely is another thing. We all wish to see again the scenes of our boyhood, when we have been separated from them long; but when we are gratified, we are always disappointed."

Morley smiled, to find the stranger speaking to all his late sensations, as if he would have divined them; but he only enquired--

"Always?"

"Always, I think," said the other; "because it is in the nature of things that it should be so. Enjoyment is a harmony--the person that is pleased with anything and the object of his pleasure must be adapted to each other. Thus the boy loves a particular scene of his youth, returns to it as a man, and does not find the same delight; not because it is changed, but because it has remained the same, and he is altered; he has lost his fitness for it. It suited the boy; but it no more suits the man than would the wooden sword and the rocking horse."

"I do not know," replied Morley, "but I should think that the memory of enjoyment would make up for the change in his own nature. Memory is the hope of the past, and both brighten the objects that they rest upon."

"True!" answered his companion; "but then that which he enjoys is not the same, but the memory of his own pleasure therein. Oh no! the life of man is still, forward--forward! Each period of existence, doubtless, has its powers and its joys, as well as its hopes and its desires."

"But I have heard many that I have loved and respected, declare," said Morley, "that in their own case the pure joys of youth were those on which memory had rested through life with the greatest satisfaction."

"Simply because they were the furthest off," replied the other; "but why call them the pure joys of youth? I do not see why they should be purer than those of any other period. Surely all joys are pure--I mean those that are not criminal. Anything that gives me pleasure, or by which I can give others pleasure, and which injures no one, is just as pure as the gathering of a flower, or the pruning of a tree--certainly more pure than crucifying a worm upon a hook, or shooting an inoffensive bird, or many another of those sports and pastimes of which youth is fond."

Morley was silent for some little time; he felt that there was something dangerous in his companion's doctrines, if pushed to the extreme; but still, as far as he had expressed them, there was nothing Of which he could take hold. The other seemed to perceive, with fine tact, that the young man who sat beside him, had taken alarm at the indefinite nature of his argument, and he added in haste--

"You will understand that I mean strictly to limit enjoyment to that which is not criminal--which is not wrong--in short, all I mean to say is, that the wisest plan for man to pursue is, to go on without ever turning back his eyes to the past; to enjoy all that is natural for his period of life, without regretting others that are gone. Each pleasure is as a precious stone, picked up upon the sea-shore, a thing to be treasured by memory; but because we find an emerald at one moment, that is no reason why we should neglect the diamond that we find the next, or the ruby that comes a little further on. Our capabilities of enjoyment were intended to be used, and he who does not do so, fails to fulfil one of the great obligations of his nature."

Morley was better satisfied, but still not completely so; and had he been older and more experienced, he might have thought that his conversation with his travelling companion, is like that which Conscience and Desire sometimes hold together, when temptation is very strong. Desire still finds an argument to lead us up to the very verge of wrong, assuring Conscience all the time that we are upon the safe ground of right, and trusting to some momentary impulse to make us leap the barrier when we have reached it.

Morley, however, was too young, too inexperienced, and be it added, too innocent even in heart, to have had many such debates with conscience, and to be experimentally acquainted with the tactics of temptation. There was certainly something in his companion's arguments which did not satisfy, but at the same time there was a peculiar charm in his manner, in his conversation, in his very look, which made words that might otherwise have failed to produce any effect, now sink into the mind, and remain, like seeds, to produce fruit at a future period.

The manner and the look that we have just spoken of, were certainly very fascinating apart, but still more so together; not so much because they harmonized as because they differed. The manner was gentle, soft, and though full of rapid thought, yet easy, and glowing with a sort of conviction that made assent easy; and yet there was nothing in the least presumptuous in it. On the contrary--indeed, every word appeared to be spoken, more as a suggestion than a decision; while the soft richness of the speaker's voice seemed calculated to persuade and lead. The look on the other hand was full of quick vivacity and fire--the eye brightened up at a word, the lip changed its expression twenty times in a minute, and withal there was an air of reckless joyousness, of rapid careless quickness, which contrasted wonderfully with the metaphysical themes he touched upon, and by contrast, gave the stronger effect to his deeper thoughts.

That he was a man of station and high breeding one would scarcely doubt; and in his dress there was that scrupulous neatness which is one of the distinguishing marks of a gentleman in youth. In older life, a man may well lose a part of that attention to his apparel which no young man should be without; but before the grand passage of forty-five, no one should deem himself old enough to go out in a bad hat if he can get a good one, or wear ill-blacked boots. The neatness of his dress did not at all approach to puppyism, but every article of his clothing was so well adapted to the other, that the whole harmonized perfectly, and gave that peculiar and undefinable tone to his appearance which has a vague sort of connexion with the mind within, a reflection perhaps we might call it, of the habitual thoughts and feelings influencing the dress without the wearer knowing it. Man is but a species of chameleon, in general taking all his tints from the things that surround him; but when these fail--like the stalk of the balsam plant--his external colouring is affected by that which passes within; and a man's fondness for particular hues, or sounds, or scents, is often no bad indication of the character of his mind.

Morley Ernstein felt not a little impressed in favour of the stranger. He was, indeed, not without strong good sense himself, but still there was a charm that he could not resist; and never dreaming that he was doing aught but passing agreeably an hour which might otherwise have proved tedious, he soon renewed the conversation, but on a different subject.

Let no one, however, venture to think that even a brief half-hour's conversation with another man of strong mind can be a matter of mere indifference--indeed, I know not that it ever is so, with any one, wise or foolish, ugly or pretty, good or bad. We are all nothing but traders in this world, mere hucksters, travelling packmen, with a stock continually changing, increasing, diminishing. We go forth into the world carrying a little wallet of ideas and feelings; and with every one to whom we speak for a moment, we are trafficking in those commodities. If we meet with a man of wisdom and of virtue, sometimes he is liberal, and supplies us largely with high and noble thoughts, receiving only in return sweet feelings of inward satisfaction; sometimes, on the other hand, he will only trade upon equal terms, and if we cannot give him wisdom for wisdom, shuts up his churlish shop and will deal with us no more. If we go to a bad man we are almost always sure to be cheated in our traffic, to get evil or useless wares, and often those corrupted things which, once admitted to our stock, spread the mould and mildew to all around. Often, often, too, in our commerce with others do we pay for the poisons which we buy as antidotes, all that we possess of good, both in feeling and idea. But when we sit down by beauty, and gentleness, and virtue, what a world of sweet images do we gain for the little that we can give in exchange! Ay, and even in passing a few light moments with a dear, innocent child, how much of bright and pure do we carry away in sensation!--how much of deep and high may we gain in thought! Oh no!--it is no indifferent thing, with whom we converse, if ideas be the riches of the spirit.

Thoughtful men, and men of rapid combinations, are almost always abrupt in conversation. A topic is started, two of them pursue it like hunters for some time together, mutually hallooing on one another; but the time comes when they separate, ride rapidly on alone, till they have run down the game, and then they come back to rouse a new quarry. Thus Morley Ernstein had soon got far away from the subject of their former discourse; and had followed the thoughts suggested by it to an end, with many a collateral idea likewise, before he spoke again. When he did so, it was merely of an object that attracted the corporeal eye.

"What a beautiful sunset!" he said, gazing out of the window of the coach towards a spot where, through a break in the large wood by which they were passing, the last rays of day were streaming in floods of gold and crimson, seeming to make the forest air thick and misty with light--"What a beautiful sunset! Might not one imagine the glades of that wood filled at this moment with every sort of fairy and fanciful being, to which the curious superstitions of old times gave birth?"

"One might, indeed!" replied the stranger. "It is a haunt formed expressly for the 'good people,' as you call them, in this country. Here the belief in such beings is very nearly extinct, even in the lowest classes. In my country, such is by no means the case; and there is scarcely one of us, whatever be his grade, in whose bosom, if you were able to search into all its hidden corners, you would not find some belief--ay, and a strong belief, too--not only in the existence of spirits, but in their assuming tangible forms and opening a communication with man."

"Are you not an Englishman, then?" demanded Morley, with so much astonishment in his countenance at the discovery that one who spoke his own difficult tongue so well was from another country, as to call up a smile upon the lip of his companion--"Are you not an Englishman, then?"

"No!" replied the stranger; "I am not; but some foreigners can speak your language tolerably, especially when they have lived long in the land. But, as I was saying, there are very few persons in Germany who are totally free from such a belief; and, indeed, it is scarcely reasonable to suppose, if we admit there is another order of created beings above ourselves, that there should be no means whatever of communication between the two next links in the same great chain. I confess, that I cannot conceive such a thing possible. If there be such things as spirits--if all be not merely material in this moving clay, there must be some means by which the superhuman being can make his presence felt and known to his fellow spirit in the earthly tabernacle. All our great men have certainly believed such to be the case. Who can read either Goëthe or Schiller, without perceiving that creed peeping through philosophy, and wit, and history, and poetry?"

"Oh, Goëthe certainly entertained such feelings!" replied Morley. "It was impossible for any one so to extract intense sublimity from human superstitions, without being tinctured with them strongly himself. Had Goëthe written whole volumes to prove that everything is material, a few lines of the choruses in Faust would have shewn him to be insincere."

"The picture of Mephistophiles himself," said his companion, "were surely quite enough."

"Yes," replied Morley; "and yet there are parts of the character of Mephistophiles which I do not clearly understand. He is all-powerful over Faust, and yet seems subservient to him. He appears at his command, obeys his behests, and yet leads, directs, and overpowers him."

"In short," replied his companion, "he serves but to command; and, depend upon it, whether it be an allegory or a portrait, the picture is a true one. It may be, that the great poet meant to represent the power of the passions. But I imagine that he drew, almost by inspiration, the likeness of that mighty being, whose fate and character have been summed up by Milton, in the words--

'Evil, be thou my good!'

You must remember, that the infinite variety of that being is as wonderful as his power. Milton might draw one portrait; Goëthe another: both different, but both alike. If Goëthe really meant a picture rather than an allegory, he shewed that Mephistophiles had bound himself simply to serve, for a certain time, the views of a vast mind which otherwise might have escaped him. He ruled Faust by his wisdom, governed, directed him--ay, even enlightened him; but the spirit adapted himself to the mortal with whom he had to deal. Even by the very tone of sadness that pervades the character of Mephistophiles, the gravity that is in his mirth, the depth that is below his lightness, he was fitted to deal with Faust. Had the character of the man been different, so would have been the character of the spirit. The Magician had power over the finer essence for the time, and the prince of one class of spirits willingly devoted himself to the service and instruction of a mortal--nay, more, it is evident, as far as he could feel affection or pity for a being so placed as Faust, he felt it for him."

"But," exclaimed Morley, "do you imagine Satan to be capable of affection and pity?"

"Why not?" demanded his companion--"more, in all probability, than beings that have never known sorrow or pain."

"You seem inclined to defend the Prince of Darkness!" rejoined Morley, with a smile.

"Certainly!" answered his companion, laughing--"if I did not defend him, no one else would; and I am always inclined to take part with the weaker side."

Almost as the stranger spoke, the coach which had been going down a long hill with terrible rapidity, swayed from side to side for a moment, like a ship in a stormy sea. A violent concussion then took place as the vehicle, in turning the corner of a bridge, struck a large stone, and the next instant Morley felt that the carriage was going over towards the side on which he sat. He had but time by one hasty glance to see that the low parapet of the bridge was close to the wheels, when the stage went over; the stones gave way beneath it, and the whole mass rolled headlong into the river below. It fell upon the top, and struck the stones in the bed of the stream. The concussion was terrible--the carriage was nearly dashed to pieces, and Morley Ernstein only felt one violent blow, only saw a thousand bright sparks flash from his own eyes, and then lost all consciousness, even that of pain.

CHAPTER IV.

The sensations of Morley Ernstein, when he returned to consciousness, were all of the most unpleasant kind. There was a numbness over his whole body, and a feeling of tingling from head to foot, which, to those who have not felt it, may be difficult, if not impossible to describe. A violent weighty pain in the head too, a sluggish oppression at the heart, and a great difficulty in drawing the breath, all made the consciousness of life so burdensome, that, when he saw a number of people standing round the bed in which he had been placed, and employing every means that art could devise and skill execute, to restore him entirely to life, he could not but feel a desire that they would let him alone, and leave him to that quiet insensibility from which they were taking such pains to rouse him. For the moment it seemed to him that death was a very pleasant thing; and he who, full of health, life, and buoyant youth, had thought half an hour before that there would be nothing more awful than to lie "in cold obstruction and to rot," now that he had become more familiar with "the lean, abhorred monster," felt not the same repugnance, and almost longed for the still quiet of the grave. Life and death are the two grand adversaries; fighting incessantly for the kingdom of man's body, and in proportion as the dominion of Life in us is powerful, so is our reluctance to yield ourselves to her enemy.

Such as I have mentioned were the first feelings of Morley Ernstein; but, as life came back more fully--as he felt his heart beat more freely, his benumbed frame regain its true sensations, his bosom heave with the unrestrained breath--his love for the bright angel, and his abhorrence for her dark opponent, returned in full force; and he could feel grateful to those who were giving him back to all the warm associations of earthly being. His eyes wandered round the little circle that encompassed his bed; but all the faces were strange, except one--that of his travelling companion in the stage-coach; who, amongst the most eager, and the most busy, was superintending with active skill the execution of every mandate pronounced by the lips of a tall, thin, yellow-faced man in black, that sat by the side of the bed near the head. All eyes were fixed upon the patient, with a look of interest in his fate and satisfaction at the change that was coming over him; but the moment he attempted to speak, every one raised a finger to the lip, in order to impose silence upon him.

"You may take away the salt from under the shoulders," said the thin yellow man; "circulation is coming back rapidly. Keep the hot water to the feet, however, and bring me a little Madeira, Mr. Jones. We must give it him by teaspoonfuls. Your friend, sir, will do," he continued, speaking to Morley's travelling companion; "but we must be very careful!--very careful, indeed! I knew a poor fellow once, who died, when every one thought him quite recovered, merely from the people imprudently raising him up in bed.--Pray do not move a muscle, sir!" he added, seeing that the young gentleman himself was evidently listening to all he said.

"You have had a very narrow escape, sir--a very narrow escape, indeed; and the least thing may undo all we have done. I never knew, in my life, a case of suspended animation, where a relapse did not prove fatal.--Oh, the Madeira!--now, sir--a teaspoonful every five minutes!"

From all that Morley Ernstein saw and heard, he judged rightly that he had undergone, and perhaps required, the treatment applied to persons who are apparently drowned. He learned, moreover, in the course of the evening, that, at the moment that he had received the severe blow on the head, which had deprived him of sensation, the carriage had sunk deep in the water, and that he would have infallibly perished had it not been for the exertions of his fellow-traveller, who, not being stunned as he was, had soon perceived that he remained under the water, and had dragged him out, through the door of the broken vehicle. He was quite insensible, however, when brought to land, and remained so for nearly an hour, although every means of resuscitation were skilfully employed.

The dangers of our poor friend were not by any means over when life once more bounded freely in his bosom. The headache which he had felt, on first recovering his senses, increased every minute; and ere the next morning, violent fever and delirium had succeeded. For ten days he hung between life and death; but the thin yellow man, whom he had seen sitting by his bedside, was, in truth, a surgeon of great skill; and the unwearied care and attention of his fellow-traveller, whose whole interest in him was only that which could be excited by the companionship of a few short hours, did as much as art to withdraw him from this new danger.

When the young gentleman recovered sufficiently to comprehend what was passing around him, he found another face by his bedside, better known than that of any one near. His old servant, Adam Gray, had been brought, it seemed, from the mansion to attend upon his young master, at a period when very little hope was entertained of his recovery, and for the four last days he had been employed in aiding the stranger in his care of the patient.

Every writer who has ever taken a pen in hand has written, and every heart, even the most selfish, has felt, how sweet is the sight of a familiar face in times of sorrow, sickness, or difficulty; so that the observation is trite enough, and yet few have analyzed the sensations which that familiar face produces, or told us why we love to see it better than fairer countenances, or even those that express as great an interest in us. It is that a familiar face comes loaded with those sweet associations of other times, which are no mean medicaments to the body or the mind. There is a light of hope upon it, reflected from those past days, which seems to brighten all the dark spots in the present; and such was the sight of that old man's countenance to Morley Ernstein. It brought to him the recollections of his early years, a feeling of balmy spring, the thoughts of health and rural sports, and many bright hours long gone; and from the moment that he saw him hovering round his sick bed, the sensation of convalescence came upon him, and he could say to himself, "I am getting well."

Ere long, conversation was allowed him, and he soon found the opportunity of doing that which he had more than once wished to do, while the grave doctor and the officious nurse had continued to impose silence upon him--namely, to thank the man, who, on so slight an acquaintance, had tended him with the care and kindness of a brother. His travelling companion, who had been absent for about an hour, entered the room, shortly after the permission to speak was granted him, and took his seat by the bedside in which he now sat up, while the balmy air of the first days of June found their way in through the open window of the little inn. Morley lost not the occasion, and expressed, as he well could do, in the fine eloquent language of the heart, the feelings of gratitude, which he experienced for all the generous kindness that had been shown him.

"Mention it not!--mention it not!" replied the stranger; "I have no title to thanks whatsoever; I did it for my own gratification, solely and simply, and consequently have no right to claim or to receive gratitude."

"Nay, nay," said Morley, "I have heard of such disclaimers before, my good friend, and know that some men always put good actions upon selfish motives, when they perform them themselves. But the way I distinguish is, to ask whether, abstracted from the pleasure of doing good, this man or that, who denies the merit of all he has done, would have so acted. This man jumps into a river, to save a child from drowning; that visits a prison, to give comfort to a sick man--would the one have plunged into the water with his clothes on merely for amusement, or the other have spent an hour in the prison if no sick man had been there? If the pleasure felt be derived solely from the goodness of the action, the man who experiences it is a good man, and well deserving the gratitude and admiration of his fellows. You saved my life, the landlord informs me, by dragging we out of the carriage while it was under water, and--"

"Yes, that is true," replied his companion, half laughing; "I did. indeed, as Sheridan called it, play the Newfoundland dog, when I found you were likely to be drowned unless assisted; but that is all, and surely that is little enough. I have done the same for a fly in a cream jug."

"But you have never stayed three weeks in a country inn," answered Morley, smiling, "to nurse a fly in a fever; and for that, at least, you deserve my deepest gratitude."

"Not at all!" answered his friend--"not at all! Even on your own principles, you owe me no thanks. I never thought whether I was doing a good action or not. In regard to the first of your mighty obligations, that of staying three weeks in a country inn, it might truly have been a great tax upon me under some circumstances; but just at that time, I had nothing on earth to do. I was going back to London out of pure weariness of the place I was in; for in general, I never am in town before the first or second of June. Here I have had fine air, fine scenery, and a fine trout-stream. What would you have more? Then as to watching and taking care of you in your delirium, I have no merit there: the truth is, I am fond of all strong emotions, and the watching you, the wondering whether you would live or die, the changes of your countenance, the gray shade that would sometimes come over your face, the flush of fever, the restless tossing to and fro--and then, again, the gambling, as it were, each moment in my own mind for your life?-all this was surely excitement enough. Besides your delirium was worth any money. There is something so strange and fantastic in the ravings of a man in fever--very much more curious and metaphysical than mere madness. In madness, one always finds one strong predominant idea; but in delirium it is as if all the ideas of a lifetime were mixed in one wild chaos. Nor Talma, nor Schroeder, nor Malibran, could have afforded me so much interest as you in your delirium."

"You have a strange taste," replied Ernstein, not altogether well pleased, in the first instance, at the explanation of his companion's feelings. A moment's reflection, however, convinced him that there was some affectation in the account, but that the affectation was of that generous kind which seeks to diminish the value of an obligation conferred upon another, even at the risk of appearing hard or selfish. "Well," he continued, "your motives are your own affairs; but the kindness you have shown me is mine, and I must feel gratitude accordingly."

While they were still speaking, the surgeon again entered, and his appearance put a stop to the conversation for the night. On the following morning, however, the patient was so far better as to be permitted to rise for a short time, and his fellow-traveller visited him towards the middle of the day, announcing that he came to bid him farewell, as he had just received letters which summoned him to London. "I do not go unwillingly," he continued, "for my plan of life is ever to hasten forward. Existence is so short that we have no time for long pauses anywhere; each joy of each period--each thought, each feeling of each period of animal being should be tasted, or they will be lost, for we must never forget the great axiom, that every minute we are a minute older."

"But do you not think," said Morley, "that we may sometimes, in our haste, taste a bitter instead of a sweet?"

"So much the better--so much the better," replied his friend, laughing; "it is by such things that we become wise. I am quite of the opinion of your great poet, Coleridge, that--

'The strongest plume in Wisdom's wing
Is memory of past folly;'

and depend upon it every man will find in life, that to be very wise, he must be a little foolish. The child that does not cut its finger before it is eight years old, will cut its hand by the time it is twelve, and perhaps its throat by the time it is twenty. What I mean is--for I see you are surprised--that we must learn what is evil or dangerous, by that acquaintance with evil and danger which is fitted for our time of life, otherwise we are sure to get our portion all at once, at some after period. It is like one of those medicines which doctors tell us accumulate in the system, and kill us suddenly when we least expect it; or rather, like one of those Eastern drugs, which are very salutary when we take a little of them every day, but utterly poisonous if we take a large dose at once."

"Might it not be better for a healthy person to take none at all?" demanded Morley; and added, the moment after, seeing his companion about to reply, "but I am not fit to argue to-day, though I think that your system has some flaws in it."

"Doubtless--doubtless," replied the other. "It would not be a human system if it had not. Heaven forbid that I should originate a perfect system of any kind! I would not commit such a crime for the world. I will only answer your question, therefore, by saying, that if we were on this earth in a healthy state, as your words suppose, it would certainly be very foolish to take drugs of any kind; but depend upon it, a portion of physic, and a portion of evil, are reserved for every man to take, to suffer, to commit, and he had better spread them over as wide a space as possible, that they may not be too thick anywhere. And now I must leave you, for the coach will soon pass."

"But," said Morley, eagerly, "I must ask you first, to tell me where I can find you in London, for you will let me hope that an acquaintance begun under such unusual circumstances is not to end here, and as yet I do not even know your name."

"It is not Mephistophiles!" replied the other, who had marked with a keen eye the expression of his young companion's countenance, at every doctrine which might be considered as doubtful in tendency, and had smiled, moreover, at what he considered the boyish innocence of Morley Ernstein--"it is not Mephistophiles! I am a very inferior devil, I assure you. My name is Everard Lieberg. In England, which is as much my home as Germany, people put Esquire at the end of it. On the other side of the channel, I put Graff before it, and the one title signifies about as little as the other."

"But tell me, Count, where I am to find you?" demanded Morley, the other having risen to depart.

"Nay, do not call me Count!" exclaimed Lieberg, laughing; "if you do, I shall fancy myself walking about London, with mustachios and a queer-looking coat, and lodging somewhere near Leicester Square. No, no, I put off the Count here, and I have a bachelor's lodging in Sackville Street, where I shall be very happy to see you--so farewell."

Morley Ernstein was left alone, and, as usual with the young, his first thoughts were of the character of his late companion. Before we grow old, we learn that the character of nineteen men out of twenty is not worth a thought. There was something in Lieberg that did not altogether please him--not alone displayed in his opinions, but also in his manner, a lightness which was superficial--not affected, but habitual--and which covered the depths of his character with an impenetrable disguise. It was like a domino, which, though nothing but thin, fluttering silk, hides form and feature, so that the real person beneath cannot be recognised, even by a near friend.

"Has he any heart, I wonder?" thought the young gentleman. "If so, he takes pains to hide it. All things seem to pass him by, affecting him but as breath upon a looking-glass, leaving no trace the moment after, upon the cold, hard surface beneath. Here he has nursed me like a brother for the last fortnight, and now he leaves me with the same air of indifference as if we had just got out of a stagecoach in which our acquaintance had commenced two hours before."

Morley felt as if he were somewhat ungrateful for scanning so closely the character of one who had treated him with much kindness, and, soon quitting such thoughts, he rang for his good old servant, Adam Gray, and enquired into all that had passed at Morley Court since he had left it--the situation of the poor cottagers, whose fate he had endeavoured to soften; the health of his horses and his dogs; the promises of the game season; and all those things that the most interest a very young Englishman, in his hours of health. The horses were all well; the dogs were in as good a state as could be wished; the game bade fair to be abundant.

"But as to Johnes, and Dickenson, and poor Widow Harvey," the old man said, "I can tell you very little, sir. They have had the money, and the bread and soup; and Johnes had work at the Lee farm. Widow Harvey got wool given her to spin, and I sent the apothecary to Dickenson, but did not hear how he was; for you see, sir, I was just going down to look in at the poor fellow's cottage, when Miss Carr came to tell me of the accident, and--"

"Miss who?" demanded Morley Ernstein, in some surprise.

"Oh, Miss Carr, sir, you know!" replied Adam Gray. "She was in a great flurry, poor young lady, and did seem to be very sorry about you--indeed every one knows she has a good heart, and does as much for the poor as she can, though that's less than she likes, poor young lady!"

"And, pray, who is Miss Carr?" demanded Ernstein; "and why does your compassion run over on her account, my good Adam? Why do you call her 'poor young lady' so often?"

"Oh, because she has such a father, to be sure, sir!" replied the servant. "Surely you recollect Old Carr, the miser, and his daughter, Miss Juliet--a beautiful girl she was--and is, too, for that matter, poor thing!"

"I do not recollect anything about them," answered Morley; "and yet I remember everything for many years before my poor mother died. But no such name as Carr ever comes back to my memory. Who is this Mr. Carr?"

"Ay, ay, I recollect," answered the old man, "it was long ago--before your time. But as to this Mr. Carr--he's a miser, and was a lawyer--ay, and cheat into the bargain, if all tales be true. However, sir, he's got money enough, they say, to buy out half the county; and there he lives, in that old tumble-down house, at the back of Yelverly, and not a shilling will he spend to repair it. He has two maids now, but till Miss Juliet was grown up, there was but one; and then the man that does the garden and looks after the farm, takes care of the two horses. Miss Juliet, they say, has some money of her own, but she spends all that upon the poor people about Yelverly, and upon books."

Morley mused; there was a feeling in his bosom--not an operation of the mind, but one of the revelations of the heart--which instantly convinced him that the lady, whose horse he had contrived to frighten, was no other than Juliet Carr. How she had discovered his situation, so as to give notice to his servants, and send one of them to him, was his first thought; but, before he gratified his curiosity on that subject, by asking any questions, he returned to something which had attracted his attention a few minutes before, demanding--

"What was it you meant just now, Adam, when you said, 'It was long ago, before my time?'"

"Oh, the quarrel, sir," replied the old man--"the quarrel between your father and Lawyer Carr; when he came about something, and vowed he would prosecute Sir Henry for defamation, as they called it, which means scandal, I take it; and your father struck him, and turned him out of the house, and he has never been near the place since."

"Did you hear how Miss Carr knew that I was ill?" demanded Morley, now fully convinced that his supposition was right.

"She told me they had been passing by this place, sir," answered Adam Gray, "and they heard the whole story from the ostlers; so she walked over, that very night, to tell us, poor young lady! It's a long walk, too, from Yelverly; so she was tired, and sat down for a minute or two in the library, and took up the book that was open upon the table--it was called 'Herrick's Poems,' I think--and asked if you had been reading it; and said, she hoped that you would soon be able to read it again, with such a sweet voice, she made us all love her. I do wonder how that man happened to have such a daughter as that--her mother was a good lady, too."

"Well, that will do, Adam!" said his master; "now bring me some soup."

CHAPTER V.

The next day Morley Ernstein was permitted by his doctor to go out, and strange, most strange, were the feelings with which he did so.--There is nothing positive on earth but truth; all other matters are relative. Truth, indeed pure abstract truth--is the starting point of all morals, and without it we should have no starting point at all; so that the world might well be Pyrrhonists or Epicureans, or what they would, were it not for the simple doctrine that two and two make four, and the consequences thereof; for, once having established that truth is right and falsehood wrong, every other moral tenet follows step by step, as a matter of course. That ethics are as much a certain science, when rightly pursued and understood, as mathematics, I have no more doubt than of my own existence, ethics being, in fact, the mathematics of the spirit.

But nevertheless, to return from our digression, it is wonderful how many things on this earth are relative, which we fancy to be quite positive; amongst the rest, every kind of sensation, every kind of pleasure, every kind of taste; so that it is quite easy for us, from our own occasional experience, to conceive how, in another state of being, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, and cast away the fibres of the flesh, many of those things that gave us pleasure here below, will be abhorrent to us, and much that might seem dull, heavy, incomprehensible to the animal walking in darkness on the earth, will then, brightened by higher perceptions, be all light, and glory, and enjoyment.

With Morley Ernstein, however, as with all convalescents, the sensations were not exactly changed from what they were before; some were acuminated, some were softened, since he had lain on the bed of sickness, and strange indeed were his feelings as he walked out, leaning on the arm of his old servant. It was only into the little garden at the back of the inn that he ventured, but it was all delight to him. Nature seemed never to have been so bright and beautiful; the broad bosom of each common rose that was planted by the side of the gravel walk, appeared a chamber of enjoyment, in which some small angel might well pass away the perfumed hours. The cobweb, spangled with morning dew, was a miracle; the breath of the breeze was heaven. There was withal a sensation of calm, peaceful repose within his own breast, which was very different from the eager fire of his nature in ordinary health; and during that day, and the one that followed it, he contemplated with pleasure a return to Morley Court, to a long lapse of dreamy hours amongst woods, and fields, and streams, with, perhaps, some thoughts of finding out fair Juliet Carr, and thanking her for the interest she had taken in him.

Day by day, however, health came back, and strength along with it, and eager activity with strength. The longing for objects on which to spend the energies within him; the curiosity of a young fresh heart for a knowledge of the deeper and more powerful things of life; that ambition for the vigorous occupations of mature minds, which possesses all who set out in life with strong bodily and intellectual faculties, returned upon the young Baronet with every pulse of renewed health; and four days after his first walk in the garden, he despatched Adam Gray for the chariot from Morley Court, and on the sixth was rolling away towards London.

London is certainly the most wonderful city in the world, and probably the most unlike any other on the earth. On approaching it, one is lost in surprise from its immensity of extent--an immensity that makes itself felt one hardly knows how. It seems to press upon you before you reach it; to multiply its forms and appearances around you, when you fancy yourself far from it; to surround, to grasp, to overwhelm you, ere you know that a city is near. Nevertheless, when once in it, the effect upon any one who is not an indigenous plant of the soil, is anything but impressive. In general, the smallness of the houses, the long rows of iron railings, the littleness of the windows, and their numbers, give the streets a petty and poor effect; while the colour of the bricks, which, when seen in grand masses, is imposing enough, has there a dull and dirty appearance, very unsatisfactory to the eye. Add to all this, the thick and heavy atmosphere, foul with the steam of fifteen hundred thousand human beings, and full three hundred thousand fires, so that a vast dome of smoke nightcaps the great capital, and only suffers the sun to penetrate, as the dim vision of a brighter thing.

In summer, indeed, the extinction of all the fires--except those which man, the cooking animal, maintains everlastingly, for the gratification of his palate--leaves the English metropolis somewhat clearer and brighter than at any other season of the year; and as it was a warm and brilliant day, in the beginning of June, when Morley Ernstein entered London, the streets looked gay and cheerful, and he drove up to the Hotel in Berkeley Square, with that feeling of pleasant expectation which comes upon us all when we enter a new abode, where a thousand means and opportunities of pleasure, a thousand channels and highways of gratification, are opened before us, and where sorrow, and pain, and misery, and sickness, and death, are hidden beneath those pompous and glittering veils with which it is the business of society to conceal the abhorrent features of all that is distressing and frightful in human existence.

There are some people who, on entering a great capital, feel a weight, an oppressive load fall upon their bosom, as if all those miseries of which we have spoken were infused into the burdensome atmosphere of the place, and were drawn in with every breath; but these must be men who have lived long, and known sorrows tangibly, who have felt the tooth of gnawing care, and the beak and talons of fierce anxiety, preying day by day upon the bleeding heart. Such, however, was not the case with Morley Ernstein; there seemed a well of hope in his bosom, the waters of which possessed a power ascribed to those consecrated by the Roman Church, of driving out all dark spirits from the spot over which they were sprinkled. The busy life, the eager energy within him, the warrior-spirit of strong animal existence, always ready to combat the ills of fate, guarded the door of imagination, and suffered no thought of coming evil to intrude.

Thus all things seemed to smile around him; and although the lilacs and the laurels, the laburnums and the privets, which tenanted the square before his eyes, might look somewhat dull and smoky, when compared with the green trees of the country; though the air he breathed might seem but a shade thinner than pea soup, and the noise of eternal carriages might strike his ear as something less tuneful than the birds of his own fields; yet it was not upon these things that his mind rested. He thought, on the contrary, of all the wonders of that mighty place; of the vast resources comprised within it; of the intellectual pleasures that were there collected as if in a store-house; of the magnificent monuments of art that it contained; of the wealth, the abundance, the splendour, the beauty, the fancy; the genius, the wisdom, the grace, with which every street was thronged; of the vast and strange combinations that were there produced; of the laws, the systems, the philosophies, the wars, the colonies, the enterprises, that had thence issued forth; of the piety, the charity, the benevolence, the great aspirations, the noble purposes, the fine designs, the wonderful discoveries, which had there originated; and--as if to give the finishing touch of the sublime to all--came over his mind the vague, spectre-like image of the crime which there had a permanent existence, an unchangeable and undiscoverable home. Such were the feelings with which he viewed London, on returning to it as his own master, free to taste, to examine, to inquire, to judge, and to enjoy.

It would require more time than I could bestow on any one part of my subject, to trace the life of Morley Ernstein during the first fortnight of his stay in London. With the eagerness of novelty he followed various pleasures, sought out various amusements, and dipped somewhat, but not deeply, in the stream of dissipation. What is called the season was that year protracted to a period later than usual. Gay carriages still thronged the streets in the end of June. The Parliament continued its sittings far into July, and gaiety succeeded gaiety, till those who had commenced the pleasures of a London life at the beginning Of the year, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, were pale and haggard, with the round of midnight parties and crowded rooms.

Not so Morley Ernstein: health and strength were returning to him every hour, in spite of the current in which he was now immersed, and by one of those strange physiological phenomena for which it is difficult, if not impossible, to account, the vigour of his frame, the impetuosity of his animal nature seemed to be increased rather than diminished by the consequences of the malady which had nearly crushed out existence altogether.

The reader, perhaps, may think that the young Baronet shewed somewhat like weak caprice, or still weaker vacillation of purpose, in plunging into the high tide of gaiety, when he had set out for London with the design of studying calmly and quietly his fellow-beings, and the strange complicated form of existence in which they moved in the great capital; but the difference between the execution and the design, as, indeed, is generally the case, was produced by the operation of external as well as internal causes, by the accidents of situation as well as the vehement impulse of high blood and energetic youth, contending against the calmer admonitions of a holier spirit within. On his first arrival in London, he followed the plan which he had proposed, and called upon no one but his guardian and Count Lieberg. He felt himself, indeed, bound in gratitude not to make any unnecessary delay in visiting either. The latter, with whom the reader is already acquainted, had saved his life; the former had protected his early years and had administered his fortune with anxious care and successful wisdom. He, however, not being yet known to the reader, we must bring him on the stage for a moment, and dwell briefly upon a character, which, though presenting no very salient points, is nevertheless worth studying as the type of a class. Mr. Hamilton was a banker--an English banker, which is as different an animal from that which goes by the same generic name in other countries, as the mammoth or antediluvian elephant is from the elephant of the Jardin des Plantes. He was a calm, quiet, reasoning man, of aristocratical family, (his brother was a peer of the realm,) and of aristocratical habits and manners. He had been selected from among three younger brothers, to take a share in one of the great London banking-houses, on account of his talent for calculation and his habits of business; and during the course of a long career, he had shewn that knowledge of detail and attention to minutiæ which is the essence of accuracy in every sort of transaction. He possessed, however, another set of qualities which are but too rarely combined in this world with those which we have ascribed to him. His general views were broad and extensive; his heart benevolent and kind; and he valued not in any degree, except as a means, that gold with which he was called upon to occupy his thoughts during a considerable portion of every day in his life. There is many a reader who may, perhaps, say, "This character is unnatural--this is one of those phantasms of ideal perfection only to be found in a romance; every one knows, that the habit of dealing with gold contracts the heart, and even if it does not diminish the intellect, it so concentrates it upon one favourite object, as to render it unavailable for all the grander purposes of life."

Thus, reasoning from abstract data, we may all produce very pleasant criticisms, as philosophers have often produced very pleasant theories, and yet be very wrong. The character of the banker is not an ideal one; and though I certainly do not intend to make him the hero of these pages, or to bring him often on the stage, I must proceed to paint him, and must add another touch, which will add to the incredibility of the whole. He was not ambitious any more than he was avaricious. He had a family of several children whom he loved passing well. His eldest daughter was the pride of his heart; she might have bound her brow with a Coronet, or have seen herself mistress of the most splendid mansion in her native land. With her father's full consent and approbation, she married a man of no great wealth and no very high expectations, having for every recommendation that he was a gentleman both in heart and manners, and a gallant soldier of a gallant race. This was not like ambition; and there are eyes which may sometime or another rest upon this page, who have witnessed those acts of generous liberality, which shew that wealth may be gained without begetting avarice, and that the most expansive liberality is perfectly compatible with the most clear and accurate knowledge of detail. Mr. Hamilton was a politician as well as a financier, but he carried the same spirit into all his proceedings, and displayed the clear and just views which spring from a high mind, combined with the noble and generous feelings which originate in a fine heart.

Such was the English Banker; it is certain that he might have some faults, that there might be an error here or a weakness there; but I envy not the man whose mental eye can gaze through the smoked glass of a misanthropical philosophy, to discover spots amid such light as that.

To the house of Mr. Hamilton, then, Morley Ernstein's very first visit was paid. He had always felt the deepest gratitude and regard towards his guardian, and he was now well pleased to express all such sensations at the end of that period, during which the one had the right to control, and the other was bound to obey. Ere he left Mr. Hamilton, he told him the plan which he had laid out for himself in London, but the good banker did not altogether approve of it.

"You are wise," he said, "Morley, not to plunge deeply into what may be called innocent dissipations, but still the society of persons in your own rank is a necessary which you must not deny yourself, not a luxury which can enfeeble or injure the mind. Besides, my young friend, if you would study man and society, you must study both under their various aspects; nor must you look at them apart, for if you would judge sanely, you must see, each grade acting and reacting upon the other. The man of rank and station is but a mere automaton, pretty to look at, amusing to examine; it is not till he is considered in his relations with those around him and below him, in the reference which his acts bear to his inferiors, to his equals, and to his God, that you have the great moral agent, the most wonderful subject of contemplation which this world can furnish. Such, too, is the case with the inferior grades of society. All their arts, all their thoughts, all their pleasures, all their sufferings, become tenfold more interesting, tenfold more important, as an object of meditation, when considered in reference to, and in comparison with, the pleasures and sufferings, thoughts and acts of others. Beware, my dear boy, beware, how, in your very outset of life, you gain a one-sided view of the grand scheme of society. It is this capital error which is the prevailing fault of politicians and philosophers. It is from this error that we have so many declaimers, and so few reasoners. It is this error which makes the staple commodity of those men, who are continually exciting one class of society against another. It is with this that they trade, and often win themselves most undeserved renown, of which future ages will strip them, and leave them naked and disgraced. It is this one-sided view which actuates the many good, and, in some respects, wise men, whom we see daily altering laws without mending them, and founding institutions without benefiting society. See, my dear Morley, the lower classes, but see the the higher also--see with your own eyes, judge with your own understanding; but see all, and not a part; judge, but judge not without knowing all that is in dispute."

"I will try to follow your advice, my dear sir," replied Morley; "for I perfectly understand and appreciate your reasoning. I merely felt inclined to look first into those lower grades, where so much misery and crime, I fear, exist, thinking that I could study with much more ease, the class in which I move myself, at an after-period."

"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."

"Not at all, not at all!" cried Lieberg, "the very contrast gives the charm! Depend upon it, we should not think half so much of beauty if there was no ugliness in the world. Life ought to be like a Russian bath, the hot and the cold alternately; nothing will strengthen the mind so much, nothing will give us such powers of endurance, nothing will keep the zest of pleasure so fresh upon us, nothing will enable us to change with so little regret, as the changing periods of our life compel us to seek new enjoyments, and follow fresh pursuits."

"I should think," replied Morley, "that with your incessant activity in the chase of pleasure, you would soon meet with satiety, and the world's stock of enjoyment would be exhausted while you are yet young."

"Impossible--impossible!" cried Lieberg; "the world's stores are inexhaustible to a man who has the capabilities of enjoying them all. But come, Ernstein, we are losing time even now. Come with me to T--'s; this is a sale day; I know of three horses that are perfect in every point; you shall buy which of them you like, and I will take any that you do not buy. Wait one moment for me while I put off my dressing-gown and on my coat. There is 'Don Juan' for you, or a Pamphlet on the Currency, as you happen to be in the mood."

The horses were bought, and justified fully Lieberg's knowledge and taste; and the rest of the day Morley Ernstein spent with his new friend, hurried on from scene to scene, and from object to object, with that impetuosity which suited but too well with his own nature. At the same time, there was a degree of wit, sufficient to enliven, but not to dazzle, a degree of eloquence, which carried away without convincing, in the conversation of Lieberg, whatever was the subject that it touched upon, which added interest to all that Morley heard and saw, by the remarks which followed. Thus, when he returned home to dress for dinner, his mind was in that state of giddy excitement, which every one must have sometimes felt after a hard day's hunting. As he made his preparations for the party at Mr. Hamilton's he resolved that the next day should be passed in more calm and thoughtful pursuits; but he little knew how difficult it is for a man to halt in any course on which he has once entered vehemently.

CHAPTER VI.

The dinner-party at Mr. Hamilton's was such as might be expected, from the character as well as the situation of the man. Splendour, chastened by good taste, reigned at the table; and as he possessed none of the harsh austerity which sometimes accompanies age, although his whole demeanour displayed that calm gravity which sits so well upon the brow of years, the guests around his table were chosen from amongst the most cheerful, as well as from amongst the best of the society which London can afford. There were one or two distinguished statesmen, there were one or two mere politicians--and these classes are very distinct--there were one or two men of high rank and vast possessions; there were one or two persons distinguished for genius and for virtue; there were one or two gay young men, with very empty heads, who chattered to one or two pretty young women, who were easily satisfied in point of conversation. The rest of the party consisted of the wives of some of those we have mentioned, and the family of Mr. Hamilton himself.

All were London people; all had been accustomed to mingle much in London society: all were acquainted with everything that existed in the part of London which they themselves inhabited, and in the society with which they were accustomed to mix. I do not mean to say, that--as is so common--they knew nothing more. On the contrary, the greater part of the men and women who sat around that dinner-table, possessed extensive information upon many subjects; but still the locality in which they dwelt, and the society in which they moved, acted in some sort as a prison to their minds, from the limits of which they did certainly occasionally make excursions, but to which they were generally brought back again by the gaoler, custom, ere they had wandered far.

Such is ordinarily the great evil of London society to a stranger. Unless an effort is charitably made for the sake of the uninitiated, the conversation of the English capital is limited to subjects of particular rather than general interest; and where a Frenchman would sport over the whole universe of created things, solely for the purpose of shewing his agility, an Englishman's conversation, following the bent of his habits, sits down by his own fireside, and seldom travels beyond the circle in which he lives. The effect of this contraction is curious and unpleasant to a stranger; but that stranger himself, if he be gentlemanly in habits and powerful in mind, very often produces a miraculous and beneficial change upon the society itself. If the people composing it really possess intellect and information, and the narrowness of their conversation proceed merely from habit, there is something in the freshness of the stranger's thoughts which interests and excites them. They make an effort to keep up with him on his own ground; the animation of the race carries them away, and off they go, scampering over hill and dale, as if they were driving after a fox.

Such was the case in the present instance. Morley Ernstein, though he had been in London several times during his school and college life, knew little of it but the names of certain streets, the theatres, the opera, and the park. He could not talk of what had taken place at Almack's the night before. He was not conversant with any of the scandal that was running in the town; he did not know who was going to marry who; and was quite unaware that Lady Loraine had had two husbands before, and was going to take a third. All the tittle-tattle, in short, of that quarter of London in which fashionable people live, was as unknown to him as the gossip of the moon; and during some ten minutes, as he sat at a little distance from Mr. Hamilton himself, he remained in profound silence, eating his soup and his fish, with as much devotion as if the Almanach des Gourmands had been his book of common prayer.

After talking for some time to other people, Mr. Hamilton cast his eyes on his former ward, and knowing that he was neither shy, nor stupid, nor sullen, nor gluttonous, he wondered to see him buried in profound meditations over the plate that was before him. At that moment, however, his ear caught the sound of the conversation that was taking place on either side of Morley.

"The Duchess has such excellent taste," said the lady on his right hand; "so she insisted upon it, that it should be dark green, with a thin line of stone colour, between the black and the green, and the arms only in light and shade."

Mr. Hamilton perceived that she was talking of the Duchess of Watercourse's new carriage, but Morley Ernstein knew nothing about it.

"Oh! but I know it did!" replied the young lady, on Ernstein's other side, speaking to a young gentleman, who might quite as well have been a young lady too; "it cost five hundred francs in Paris, and that is twenty pounds--is it not? But then it was à point d'armes, and it was trimmed with the most beautiful valenciennes, three fingers broad."

Mr. Hamilton guessed that she was talking of a pocket-handkerchief; but what she said was as unintelligible to Morley, as an essay on the differential calculus would have been to her. At that moment the young Baronet raised his eyes, with a curious sort of smile, to the face of his former guardian, and Mr. Hamilton certainly read his look, and connected it with their conversation of that morning. It seemed to say--"Notwithstanding all your exhortations, my good friend, the study of the higher classes of society does not appear to me to tend much to edification." But Mr. Hamilton, who knew that there is such a thing as being stupid by convention, made an effort to give his young friend an opening, and consequently addressing the lady who had last been speaking, he said--"Pray, what do you call à point d'armes, Lady Caroline?--I confess I am very ignorant, and so, I fear, is my friend Morley, next to you."

The young lady coloured a little, and laughed, saying--"I was only talking of a pocket-handkerchief which cost five hundred francs."

"Was any one wicked enough to give it?" said Morley, to whom she had addressed the last few words.

"O dear, yes," she replied; "we good people in London are wicked enough to do anything for the sake of fashion."

"There is candour enough, at least, in the avowal," thought Morley Ernstein, and there was something in the young lady's tone as she answered, which struck him, and made him conceive that his first opinion of her mental powers, might not be altogether accurate.

Let it be remarked, that, the very general idea, that speech consists of words alone, is extremely erroneous. That the parts of speech, indeed, which are beaten into us at school, and for which, during a certain period of our lives, we curse all the grammarians that ever lived, from Priscian down to Lily, consist entirely of words, is true; but he who looks closer than any of these grammar-makers at the real philosophy of language, will find that speech consists of three distinct branches--words, looks, and tones. All these must act together to make what is properly called speech. Without either of the two last branches, the words rightly arranged form but what is called language; but that is a very different thing. How much is there in a tone?--what a variety of meanings will it give to the same word, or to the same sentence! It renders occasionally the same phrase negative or affirmative; it continually changes it from an assertion to an interrogation. The most positive form of language in the world, under the magic influence of a tone, becomes the strongest expression of doubt, and "I will not" means "I will" full as frequently as anything else.

Tones, too, besides shewing the meaning of the speaker at the moment, occasionally go on to display the character of his mind or the habitual direction of his thoughts; and it was by this interpreter that Morley Ernstein was led at once to translate the little insignificant moral that fell from his fair neighbour's lips, into a hint, that her mind did not always dwell upon the frivolous things of which she had just been speaking. He followed the direction in which she led: the conversation grew brighter, more animated; many persons took part in it; many subjects were discussed; the freshness of Morley's mind led others gaily after him. The vehemence and eagerness of his natural character, carried him off to a thousand subjects, which he at first never dreamed of touching upon; and in short, the conversation of the next half hour was like the wild gallop which we have seen him take across his own park; and, as then too, he ended by leaping the wall at a hound, and plunging into a topic, which might well be compared to the high road, being neither more nor less than politics.

A sudden silence followed, and the young gentleman, feeling that he had gone quite far enough, drew in the rein, and stopped in full course. The impetus however was given, the thoughts of those around him were led so far away from all the ordinary subjects of discussion at a London party, that they would have found it difficult to get back again, even if they had been so inclined, which, however, was the case with but few of them; and one or two of the elder and more distinguished persons present, purposely led Morley on to speak upon various subjects with which they judged him to be well acquainted. It was done with tact and discretion, however, in such a manner as to draw him out, without letting him perceive that any one looked upon him as a sort of American Indian.

On rising from table, a Peer who had figured in more than one administration, drew Mr. Hamilton aside, and made Morley the subject of conversation, while that young gentleman himself was talking for a few moments with an elderly man of amiable manners, called Lord Clavering.

"A very remarkable young man, Mr. Hamilton!" said the statesman--"somewhat fresh and inexperienced; but his ideas are very original, and generally just. Is his fortune large?"

"Very considerable!" replied Mr. Hamilton; "his father, whom you must have known, left two large estates, one called the Morley Court estate; the other still larger, but not so productive, in the wilds of Northumberland. He succeeded when very young, and as you may suppose, I have not let the property decrease during his minority."

"I know, Mr. Hamilton--I know, Mr. Hamilton!" replied the Peer, with a meaning smile. "Would it not be better to bring the young gentleman into the House of Commons? There is the old borough, you know, Hamilton, will be vacant after this session; for poor Wilkinson accepts the Hundreds, on account of bad health. My whole influence shall be given to your young friend, if he chooses to stand."

Mr. Hamilton bowed, and thanked the Peer, but somewhat drily withal, saying, "I will mention to him what your lordship says;" and then, turning away, he spoke to some of his other guests.

Not long after, the knocker of Mr. Hamilton's door became in great request, footman after footman laying his hand upon it, and endeavouring, it would seem, to see how far he could render it a nuisance to every one in the neighbourhood. Crowds of well-dressed people, of every complexion and appearance under the sun, began to fill the rooms, and certainly afforded--as every great party of a great city does--a more miscellaneous assortment of strange animals than can be found in the Regent's Park, or the Jardin des Plantes. Putting aside the differences of hue and colouring--the fair, the dark, the bronze, the sallow, the ruddy, the pale--and the differences of size--the tall, the short, the fat, the thin, the middle-sized--and of name, the variations of which were derived from every colour under heaven, black, brown, green, grey, white, and every quarter that the wind blows front, east, west, north, and south--and the difference of features--the bottle-nosed, the small-eyed, the long-chinned, the cheek boned, down to the noseless rotundity of a Gibbon's countenance, and the saucer-eyes that might have suited the owl in the Freyschutz--putting aside all these, I say there were various persons, each of whom might have passed for a lusus naturæ, were not many such to be found in every assembly of this world's children. There were some without heads, and some without hearts, some without feelings, and some without understanding. Some were simply bundles of pulleys and ropes, with a hydraulic machine for keeping them going--termed, by courtesy, flesh, bones, and blood, but none the less mere machines as ever came out of Maudslay's furnaces. Some were but bags of other people's ideas, who were propelled about the world as if on castors, receiving all that those who were near them chose to cram them with. Others were like what surveyors call a spirit-level, the fluid in which inclines this way or that, according to that which it leans upon. There were those, too, whose microscopic minds enlarge the atoms under their own eyes, till mites seem mountains, but who yet can see nothing further than an inch from their own noses; and there were those, also, who appear to be always gazing through a theodolite, so busily gauging distant objects as to overlook everything that is immediately before them. There was, in short, the man of vast general views, who can never fix his mind down to particular truths, and the man of narrow realities, who cannot stretch his comprehension to anything that he has not seen. Besides all these, there was the ordinary portion of the milk-and-water of society; a good deal of the vinegar; here and there some spirits of wine, a few flowers, and a scanty portion of fruit.

In the midst of all this, what did Morley Ernstein do? He amused himself greatly, as every young man of tolerable intellect might do; he laughed at some, and with others; was little annoyed by any; and, with a heart too young to be a good hater, he saw not much to excite anger, though a good deal to excite pity. There were some, however, who pleased him much. One or two young men, whose manners, tone, and countenance he liked; and more young women, whom, of course, he liked better still. He was a good deal courted, and made much of; and many ladies who had daughters, marriageable and unmarried, sent people to bring him up, and introduce him. Morley thought it very natural that such should be the case. "Were I a mother," he said to himself, "which, thank Heaven, I never can be, I would do just the same. People cry out upon this sort of thing--I really do not see why they should do so, more than censure a father for getting his son a commission in the Guards. It is right that we should wish to see our children well provided for; and so long as there is nothing unfair, no deception, no concealment, the purpose is rather honourable than otherwise."

Morley Ernstein knew that his large fortune and position in society must cause him to be regarded as a good match by more than half the mothers in England; he had heard so, and believed it; but he did not suffer that belief to make him either conceited, or suspicious. "It is a great advantage to me," he thought; "for it gives me the entrance into many a house where I could not otherwise penetrate, and puts me above the consideration of wealth, which I might otherwise be driven to, in the choice of my future wife. Thank. God! I can afford to wed the poorest girl in Europe if I find that she possesses those qualities which I believe will make me happy."

With these feelings, Morley Ernstein could hardly fail to make himself agreeable in the society of women; and certain it is, that many of those intriguing mothers, who go beyond that just limit which his mind had clearly fixed, thought, when they saw his careless and unsuspicious manner, his want of conceit in the gifts of fortune, and the readiness with which he met any advances, that he would be an easy as well as a golden prize, and prepared themselves to do battle with their rivals in the same good cause, for the possession of the young Baronet. They found themselves mistaken, for the simplest of all reasons, that mothers who could scheme, and contrive, and deceive, for the purpose of entangling him, were precisely those who could by no possible means bring up a daughter in such a way as to satisfy, even in manners, the young heir of Morley Court.

However, the evening passed pleasantly for Morley Ernstein. He was amused, as I have said; but, in truth, there was something more. He was interested and excited. Where is the young man of one-and-twenty to be found, who will not let his heart yield, in a great degree, to the effect of scene and circumstance?--to the moving of fair and graceful forms around him?--to the sound of sweet voices, mingled with music?--to the glittering of bright jewels, and of brighter eyes? and to soft words and gentle looks, enlivened from time to time by flights of gay wit, or even thoughtless merriment. Morley certainly passed through the rooms, criticising as he went, and found much interest in examining the characters of the persons present; but that was not all: he gradually became one of them himself in feeling, took an individual interest as well as a general one, in what was going on, shared in the excitement, and went home at length, after having enjoyed the whole probably ten times as much as any one there, except it was some young girl of eighteen, who met the man she hoped might love her, or some unknown youth who had never before obtained admission to the higher classes of English society.

CHAPTER VII.

The general diffusion of knowledge is a very great thing, no doubt, and the cultivation of intellectual powers, in every grade of life and class of society, may probably produce a very excellent result; but yet, the man who goes about the world with his eyes open--it is certainly very rare to find such a man, for the great mass of human beings decidedly keep their eyes shut altogether, or, at best, but half unclosed--the man who goes about the world with his eyes open will be inclined, from a great number of very curious facts that he perceives, to deduce a theory, or, perhaps, if that be too positive a term, we may say, to build up an hypothesis, very much at variance with the dream of the French philosophers before the first revolution, regarding the perfectibility of human nature. He will be inclined to imagine that the will of God may allot to a certain number of mortals only a certain portion of genius, and that when a very great share of this genius is concentrated in a few individuals of the number, the rest of the multitude remain dull and incapable, while the few produce the most sublime fruits of human intellect; and, on the contrary, where the allotted portion of talent is spread over a great surface, divided amongst many, not only few distinguish themselves from the rest, but none produce anything equal to the works brought into being by the two or three more gifted men which we have referred to in the other case. Thus, in the present age, where all is light, in not one of the arts do we find such wonderful results as we might anticipate from the general diffusion of knowledge. It is very true, great discoveries have been made--that we have had Herschells, La Places, Faradays--that we have discovered steam-engines, railroads, electric telegraphs; but, though the assertion may seem bold, the gauge of original powers in the human mind is to be found more in the arts than in the sciences. The sciences build upon tradition; they are cumulative, and all the generations of the past together hold out the hand to raise up the diligent aspirer to a height above themselves. Not so the arts; for though the scientific part of each may be improved, by, the accumulation of knowledge, that part which gives them their fire and vigour depends upon the genius of each individual artist; and just in the same proportion as you find a certain degree of skill very generally diffused, you will find a multitude of poets, painters, statuaries, and a sad deficiency of excellence amongst them.

Nothing, perhaps, shewed the grandeur and the grasp of ancient art more strongly than the vigour with which the old painters used the effect produced upon the human mind by the power of contrast, and the infinite skill with which they employed that power, so as never to violate those essential principles of harmony which affect painting and sculpture fully as much as they affect music and poetry. Where is the man of the present day who can set red, and yellow, and blue garments side by side with hues of the most sparkling brightness, and yet in no degree offend the eye, or produce the least sensation of harshness upon the mind? So, nevertheless, it is in the paintings of almost all the finest old masters; and we shall also find, that in life itself, one of the greatest zests to enjoyment is striking contrast, provided we can obtain it without any harshness of transition.

Morley Ernstein sat at breakfast, on the following day, somewhat later than usual, thinking over all the people and the things he had seen, and all the words and sounds he had heard, and as, though somewhat variable in his moods, he was not one of those monsters of philosophy who come out into the world at the age of one-and-twenty, like Minerva all armed from the head of Jove, with a sombre and supercilious disgust for common life and its vanities--as he was, in short, neither less nor more than an eager, impetuous, though talented and feeling, young man, it must be confessed, he felt a little of that sort of giddiness of brain, and hurry of ideas, which follows excitement of any kind. His reveries, however, were soon broken in upon by the appearance of his friend Lieberg, who did not take the seat placed for him, but immediately exclaimed--

"Come, Ernstein, you are on the search for strange things; I have one all ready for you. I am going to Bow-street, and on what occasion I will tell you by the way. There you may make a mental breakfast upon all the rogues and vagabonds that are served up fresh every morning about eleven, like new shrimps at Worthing."

"I shall be delighted," replied Morley. "I long extremely to see a good deal more of those gentry; they and their manners have always formed a subject of wonder and interest for my imagination."

"You may pamper its appetite here to the full," answered Lieberg; "but come, I shall be late."

Morley Ernstein was speedily equipped and rolling along in Lieberg's cabriolet towards that street where, in days of yore, a thieves' coffee-house appeared on one side of the way, nearly opposite to the place whence so many of them were sent to trial and to death. As a Bow-street officer once expressed it--"The house had been established there, that the gentlemen might always be ready when they were wanted." As they proceeded, Lieberg told him that his pocket had been picked of a gold snuff-box, coming out of the opera on the preceding night.

"The thing was done in the most deliberate manner," he said. "I found myself pressed upon very hard by three strong fellows, and feeling a sort of waving undulation of my pocket behind, I turned round to look, and saw a very well-dressed man in the act of abstracting the box, without any great ceremony or delicacy. With the fullest intentions of knocking him down, I was prevented from moving in many way by the two men who pressed me on either side, and who, by a well-devised method of squeezing their victim, held me as if in a vice. Scarcely could I turn my head round again, when I found something tugging hard at my watch; luckily there was a strong guard round my neck, but, nevertheless, after the conquest of my snuff-box had been fully effected, the fellow who was before me still gave two hearty pulls, and when he ceased, had the impudence to say, with a grin--'That's a good chain, sir--I'd advise you to take care of it.' They then shouted to each other--'Be off--be off!' and began running up the Haymarket at full speed. I chased the man who had got the box for some way, crying--'Stop thief!' A watchman sprang his rattle, and tried to seize one of the fellows; but, by a dexterous movement, the pickpocket tripped up the poor Charley's feet, and he, rolling down before me, stopped one for the moment, and the fellows escaped. I immediately sent for a Bow-street officer, described my friend who had got the snuff-box, and this morning was told that he is in custody. A curious hint, however, was given me by my good friend R----, the officer. 'Which do you want to do, sir--get your snuff-box, or punish the man? You can't do both, you know.' 'To get my snuff-box,' I replied; 'so if you can manage that for me, I can contrive not to be quite sure of his identity, you know.' 'No, no, sir,' said R----, with a wink of his eye, 'that's no go; you must swear to him positively, otherwise the fellows will think you've got no hold of him, and they'll keep the yellow. You be quite sure, and we'll have an alibi ready.' So you see, Ernstein, I am going to play my part in a pretty farce."

As he spoke the last words, the cabriolet rolled up to the door of the police-office, in Bow-street, round which were standing numerous groups of men and women, whose character was anything but doubtful, and whose appearance was certainly by no means prepossessing, whatever their practices might be. There might be seen the face pale and swollen from habitual drunkenness, looking like a moulded lump of unbaked dough, with an expression which will bear no logical description, though it was marked and peculiar enough. It was the expression of stupid cunning, if one may use such a term, and is seldom to be met with, except in the countenances of those in whom drunkenness is only an accessory to other vices. There, too, might be beheld all the terrible marks, with which crime brands upon the forehead of the guilty the history of their faults and punishment. The red vermilion lines about the mouth and eyelids; the swelled and sometimes blackened eyes; the face covered with many a patch and plaster; the hair rugged and dirty; the dull, downcast look, not of active but of passive despair, seeing nothing round it, but fixing the corporeal eyes upon blankness, while looking with its mental eyes into itself. Oh! who can tell what it must be sometimes for the spirit to stare into the dark cavern of the heart, with that heavy, straining gaze, ineffectual, hopeless, finding nothing there--nothing to solace or to soothe; nothing to elevate or to support; nothing from the past, nothing for the future; nothing to be derived from memory; nothing to be bestowed on hope. Nothing!--nothing! All blank darkness, blotted over with the night of crime!

Through a crowd of such beings standing round the door of the police-office in Bow-street, Morley and his friend drove up to the side of the pavement, and jumped out of the cabriolet, while Lieberg's young groom sprang to the head of the tall, powerful horse, who seemed as if he could have run away with him like a feather, and held him firm with both hands, like a small bull-dog pinning an immense bull. Along the dirty passage, the wainscoted walls of which, on either side, about five feet from the ground, were traced with a long-continued smear of greasy black, from the incessant rubbing of human shoulders, Lieberg, and his companion, walked on--one or two very doubtful-looking people giving way before the two swells, as they internally termed them--into the room where the magistrates were sitting.

There were several persons already at the bar, and in the place assigned to the attorneys were various shrewd-looking, keen-faced men, with eyes full of business, while in one or two instances an ostentatious blue bag appeared beside them. More than one personage, however, who seemed merely, an idler, was also amongst the select; while at the back of the part appropriated to the people, chatting carelessly over totally different subjects, was a group of friendly officers and pickpockets, screened from the bench and the bar by a tolerable thick row of human heads, male and female, through the interstices between which, a girl of fourteen, who seemed already a prostitute, and a boy somewhat younger, were striving to get a view of what was passing at the bar. The court itself possessed an atmosphere redolent of a peculiarly disagreeable smell of human nature, mixed with second-hand whiffs of beer, tobacco, and gin, which, to the more refined noses of the two gentlemen who now entered the court, and especially to that of Morley Ernstein, which was principally accustomed to the free air and sweet scents of the country, was anything but fragrant.

The case before the magistrates was disposed of ere any notice was taken of Lieberg and his companion; but then, the gentleman who had relieved him of his snuff-box on the night before, being placed at the bar, and the rank, station, and appearance, of the two friends being taken into due consideration by His Worship, they were invited to take their places on the bench, and the charge was entered into. Lieberg detailed the whole affair, and swore to the prisoner's identity; a keen-faced man asked him several questions on behalf of the prisoner, and the magistrate, after giving the personage at the bar a proper warning not to say anything more than he liked, interrogated him in turn.

The man positively declared, that the gentleman must be mistaken, affirming, with a sly look and half-suppressed grin, that he did not mean to impeach the truth and honour of such a gentleman as he was, but that there was a mistake somewhere; for at that very hour, and for a full hour before and after, he was with a club called the "Rum Fellows," which met weekly at a certain house that he named. Very honest men, they were, he said, though they was Rum Fellows, and a number of respectable tradesmen too. He could prove it, he said, for there were lots of witnesses. He would call one immediately, whom he had sent for as soon as he was taken up.

He accordingly called a Mr. Higgins, but for a moment or two Mr. Higgins did not appear, and there was a murmur ran through the court in consequence, which no one took pains to keep from the ears of the bench, of, "where is he? where is he?--where's Bill Jones's alibi?" and at length the call for Bill Jones's alibi was roared with a stentorian voice along the passage, and transmitted to the public-house on the opposite side of the street.

A moment after, in rushed a short, stout, swarthy man, very well dressed, after the fashion of a respectable tradesman. His coal-black hair was as smooth as a mirror; his linen was clean, and white; he had a pair of drab gaiters upon his sturdy legs, a black coat, a Marcellas waistcoat, and a coloured handkerchief. His eyes were black and large, his teeth fine and white, and on a fat little finger he wore a fat, long ring. He was a little out of breath with haste, and, as he appeared before the magistrates, he wiped from the corners of his mouth the last vestiges of what the people of that place generally term "something short," which he had taken to keep him fresh before the court. He bowed low to the sitting magistrates, low to Lieberg and to Ernstein, and then nodded to the prisoner at the bar, exclaiming--"Ah, Bill! what's the matter? Surely you did not get drunk last night after you left us!"

His innocent mind being enlightened, in regard to the charge against his friend, he swore most positively, that Bill Jones had been with him and others, at a public-house named the "George," celebrating the mysteries of a club called the "Rum Fellows," at the very hour when Colonel Lieberg's snuff-box had been extracted from his pocket. He swore that the said Bill Jones had been there an hour before and an hour afterwards; and he did, moreover, what, to the uninitiated, might seem a dangerous proceeding--that is to say, he entered into minute particulars as to what Bill Jones said or did on that occasion.

"Well, then, Mr. Higgins," said the magistrate, "if such be the case, there must be, doubtless, others of your club who can swear to the same facts as yourself; if the prisoner thinks fit, he can call another witness."

The prisoner was prepared upon this point also, and he accordingly called a Mr. Farebrother. While Mr. Farebrother was being sought for, Mr. Higgins thought fit to enlighten the court upon his profession, saying, he did not see why his word should be disbelieved, as he was a respectable tradesman.

"Yes, Mr. Higgins," said the magistrate, "I know you; you are a pawnbroker. You may go down."

Mr. Farebrother presented an appearance the most opposite that it is possible to imagine to that of his club-fellow, Mr. Higgins. He was a small, thin, narrow-made man; with a coat of good quality, but originally constructed for a much more considerable person than himself. Indeed, he seemed to have a strong desire to be at room in his clothes, for the slate-coloured trowsers with which his nether man was ornamented, lapped vaguely over his shoes behind; which, if the stockings were in harmony with those shoes, might be, upon the whole, advantageous to him. His look was humble and sanctimonious, and, either from tenderness of heart or of eyes, he had a weeping look about him, which those who knew him believed to increase greatly under reiterated tumblers of brandy and water. We need not enter largely into the testimony which he gave; suffice it to say, he corroborated, in every point, the testimony of Mr. Higgins, and the story of Bill Jones.

The magistrate, as a matter of form, asked him some shrewd, sensible questions, premising them, however, by saying, in a low voice, to Colonel Lieberg, "You wont convict him; the thing is too well got up."

Mr. Farebrother resisted manfully every attempt to wring the truth from him; he had more than once been under the hands of Mister afterwards Baron Garrow, and, consequently, there was not an art by which a witness can be made to forget or betray himself, that he was not thoroughly acquainted with, and ready to resist. Having terminated his examination, the magistrate turned to the accuser, with a silent smile, as if asking--"What am I to do next?"

"I certainly thought I was sure of the identity," said Lieberg, "and, accordingly, swore to the fact; but, after what we have heard, I suppose the matter must be given up."

The magistrate accordingly dismissed the charge; but Bill Jones, who stood upon character, seemed resolved to have the last word: "I hope, your worship," he observed, "that I quit this bar with honour."

"Pooh! nonsense!" said the magistrate. "Go along;" and the worthy gentleman slunk out of court, like a dog, under the influence of fear. Lieberg and Ernstein took leave, and departed also, followed, a step behind, by R----, the officer, who had been standing near the prisoner during the whole time.

"I beg your pardon, Colonel," he said, as soon as they got into the passage, "but I sha'n't be able to come up to you, to-day, so here's your box;" and he pulled out of his pocket, and presented to Lieberg, the splendid box, of which he had been robbed the night before. "The men will expect you to stand something, sir," he said; "but I'll do what's right, and let you know what it comes to to-morrow."

"Do, do!" replied Lieberg. "But, harkye, R----, here's a young friend of mine who wishes to become acquainted with what is going on in all stations in society. Could you not give him a little insight into the lives of such gentry as we have just seen?"

"Lord bless you!--yes, sir," cried R----; "I will introduce him to them all, if he likes; but, you know, sir, there's a proverb about touching pitch."

"If there's any danger in it," said Lieberg, "of course he had better not."

"Oh, no danger in life, sir!" replied R----; "as I will manage for him; but he had better mind his watch, and his purse, and all that; or leave them at home. The gentleman, I take it, wants a lark; and if that's the case, he can have it; but it may cost him something, perhaps."

"It is not exactly a 'lark,' as you term it," replied Morley, in a more serious and sedate tone than the officer had expected from his years; "as my friend has told you, I want to see something of the mode of life of these people, as well as others."

"Oh! you are a flosofer, sir--are you?" said R----, "or, perhaps, a flantrofist! Well, sir, there's no reason why you shouldn't. It may cost a pound in lush, or what not; but as for your being safe, make your mind at ease about that; they know me too well to meddle with you. I wouldn't introduce you to any of that sort of fellows. Why, you know, sir, there are only two kind of people that set about regularly committing a murder. First of all, there's the fellow that knows he is well nigh up to the mark; he gets not to care what he does, and takes his chance of one thing or another. Those are the old, bad hands, that have been at every kind of thing for many a long year, and having got down low, are not able to keep upon the quiet lay, but must make some grand stroke to set them up altogether, or send them to the drop. Then there are others, sir, that do it unaccountably--men that haven't been half so bad as some others, who seem to take it into their head all of a sudden; those are the fellows that give us the greatest trouble, for we are not up to them; and sometimes we may be a week or ten days before we find out who has done it. But I wont put you in the way of anything that is dangerous. The best thing I can do for you, is, to make you acquainted with Master Higgins, there; you'll find him a very gentlemanly sort of man, and as he lost, I suppose, a matter of three or four pounds upon this snuff-box, it is but right to be civil to him. I could take you over there, sir, where they have gone to talk of the affair; but I think you had better let me bring him to you to-night, and then you can settle the matter together."

This plan was accordingly agreed upon; Morley gave his address to the officer, and as soon as it was dark R---- entered the young gentleman's sitting-room, in Berkeley-square.

"Oh, you are alone, sir, are you?" said he.

"Yes," replied Ernstein. "Have you not brought your friend with you?"

"Oh, yes," replied R---; "but I have left him behind, there, in the passage, talking with your servant, sir; for I thought you might have somebody with you, and might not like to have him seen."

Morley smiled at the officer's estimates of respectability; but he merely replied, "Is he so well known, then?"

"Oh, yes, sir; he is well known enough," said R----; "especially amongst us. However, as a hood for what he was coming about, he brought something to offer you for sale, as if he were a regular tradesman."

"Which, I suppose, he expects me to buy," said Morley, "as the price of his favour and protection."

"Oh, no, sir," answered R----; "you need not buy anything, unless you like. He is always sure to get his market--it is the price that he takes the things at which he makes by."

"Well! bring him in, then," said Morley; "and we will talk about the matter afterwards."

Mr. Higgins was speedily introduced, and, as he entered, gave a rapid, but very marking, glance round the whole room. It is probable, that there was not a table, chair, or piece of china, down to the coffee cup and saucer with which Morley was engaged when he entered, that he would not have known again, had it been brought to pawn at his shop. Mr. Higgins made a low bow to the inhabitant of the apartment, after he had remarked upon the other things which it contained, and, seeing that Morley was making as keen an investigation of his person as he himself ever had made of any object for sale or pledge offered to him by the children of vice and misery with whom he had generally to deal, he thought fit to begin the conversation first, and cut short a scrutiny of which he was not fond.

"Mr. R---- has done me the honour, sir," he began, in very tolerable language, "of bringing me here, because, he said you wished to see some little things in my way;" and having uttered this very equivocal sentence, he held his tongue, and left Morley to take it up in what sense he chose.

Morley was amused, but he replied in such a manner as still to leave the task of explanation to the other.

"I am very much obliged to Mr. R----," he said. "Pray, what have you got to shew me?"

The man grinned, to find that the young gentleman could deal in equivoques, as well as himself. Ere he answered, he gave an approving wink of the eye to the Officer, which might have been translated, perhaps--"He is not a fool, after all, though he is gentleman." However, he would not be brought to the point; and putting his hand in his pocket, he produced a small shagreen case, which he opened, and laid on the table before Morley Ernstein; displaying to the wondering eyes of the young baronet, a pair of very beautiful diamond ear-rings. Morley gazed at them for a moment or two, in no small surprise.

"They are very handsome, indeed," he said, at length--"they are very handsome, indeed, as far as I am any judge of such things; but, pray, what do you intend me to do with these?"

"To buy them, sir," replied the man, quite coolly.

"I hope not to wear them, too," said Morley, "for that I shall scarcely consent to."

"O no, sir!" answered Mr. Higgins, laughing; "but such gentlemen as you, are always wanting diamond ear-rings. Why, there isn't one of all those ladies that you want to make a present to, who would not say they are as handsome a pair as ever were seen. I will let you have them a great bargain, too. Why, Lord ----'s young lady sold me a pair, the other day, for twice the money, which he had given her only two days before."

"A pleasant comment on such sort of connexions," thought Morley Ernstein; but he answered, aloud--"There is one objection to my taking these, even if I did want them, my good friend--namely, that I do not exactly know where they may come from."

The man paused, and stared in his face for a moment.

"Ha, now I take you, sir--now I take you!" he cried, at length. "But I can assure you, you are mistaken; they are not exactly mine. I am disposing of them for another party; but I think if you knew what an act of charity you are doing in buying them, you would give the full money willingly enough, and perhaps something into the bargain."

"Indeed!" said Morley, with his curiosity somewhat excited; "pray, who do they belong to?"

"Oh, as nice a young lady, sir, as ever lived!" replied the man. "Her father was a clergyman, and her mother a lady of good fortune, and amongst the tip-top of the world; but there was a law-suit about the mother's fortune, to whom these ear-rings belonged, I have heard, and that ruined her husband, and broke her heart. She died first, and the parson not long after; and they left this daughter and a boy, who is a wild one, with about a couple of hundred between them, and some nic-nacs. Well, the boy soon got through his money, and his sister's too; and from time to time he came to me, with a lot of things to sell: His sister, he let out the other day, had kept him and herself too by teaching; but now she hasn't had much to do for some time, because she fell ill in the winter, and so lost her pupils. They are well nigh starving, the boy tells me, and in the end she is driven to sell her mother's ear-rings. She only asks forty pounds for them, sir--I think they are worth a hundred."

The story had every appearance of truth about it to the mind of Morley Ernstein. Such things were very likely to happen; and the man told it, too, like a true story. After asking why Mr. Higgins did not buy the diamonds himself, and receiving the satisfactory answer, that he had bought just such a pair before from Lord ----'s young lady, and could not afford to buy two, as well as having received truth-like replies to one or two other questions, Morley made up his mind somewhat precipitately to do three things: to purchase the ear-rings, to find out the brother, and to see if, through him, he could not do something for the sister.

"Pray, where does this young man live?" he said, after having concluded the purchase; "do you think he will have any objection to speak with me about his affairs?"

"Oh, not he, sir!" cried the man; "the young scamp don't mind talking about them to the whole world. He's no shame left! He lives at No. 3, Dover-street, New-road, and his sister too. A prettier girl I never saw, in all the course of my life, for I went there one day."

Morley put down the address; and having dismissed this subject, and arranged to make an expedition with the worthy Mr. Higgins, into some of the most reputable resorts of rogues and vagabonds, on the succeeding night, he suffered him and R---- to depart, waiting with some impatience for the following morning, when he proposed to put his Quixotic purpose, regarding the sellers of the diamond earrings, into execution.

When the Officer and Higgins were on the pavement of Berkeley-square, the former whistled three bars of an air as popular in its day as the elegant tune of Jim Crow has been within our own recollection. These bars were whistled with emphasis, which ought in all grammars to be considered as an additional part of speech, adding more significance to a sentence than either noun or verb. Higgins seemed to understand perfectly well what he meant, and said, in a tone of reply--

"He wants to see life, Master R----. We'll shew it him, wont we? His old servant told me that he was a tender-hearted young gentleman, and did a world of good in his own parish!"

CHAPTER VIII.

Morley Ernstein made all sorts of good resolutions--that is to say, not virtuous resolutions, because, as yet, there was no temptation for him to be otherwise; but worldly good resolutions--the resolutions of prudence, propriety, economy. In short, all those sort of resolutions which one makes when one has fixed upon a certain line of conduct, from feeling rather than from judgment, and wish to enchain our purpose in its execution, by the exercise of that very power whose sway we have cast off. Morley Ernstein resolved, then, that he would inquire into all the facts with the most scrupulous accuracy; that he would not assist this young man and his sister beyond a certain point; that he would not assist the youth at all, unless he found that there were hopes of amendment; and that, should such not be the case, he would employ the intervention of Mr. Hamilton to give aid to the young lady. No one on earth can doubt that these were all very prudent resolutions. If he had been forty, he could not have been more reasonable, though, probably, if he had been forty, he never would have formed them. But resolutions are always the sport of accident, and however harsh and hard it may be to say, yet I fear it is nevertheless true, that the course of conduct which needs to be guarded with such scrupulous care, had better never to be entered upon at all.

To return to Morley Ernstein. At the hour of eleven, his new cabriolet, which the poetical coachmaker had assured him would roll over the pavement like a cloud through the sky, and one of his new horses, which, if the same figurative personage had beheld him, would most likely have been compared to the wind impelling the cloud, were at the door of the hotel, together with a groom upon the most approved scale, bearing gloves as white as the Horse Guards', and the usual neat, but unaccountable sort of clothing, called leather breeches and top-boots. Morley Ernstein descended with a slow step, entered his cabriolet thoughtfully, and drove towards the house to which he had been addressed, not going above a mile out of his way, in consequence of his ignorance of all those narrow turnings and windings which a professed London coachman is fond of taking. The street was a small one, and evidently a poor one, but Morley Ernstein had expected nothing else, and the house was neat and clean, with a white doorstep, a clean door, and a small brass knocker. The young gentleman's groom, by his directions, applied his hand to the implement of noise, and produced a roll of repeated knocks, which, in any other country, would be held as a nuisance. A few minutes after, a neat maid-servant presented herself, and, in answer to the question, "Is Mr. William Barham at home?" replied in the affirmative.

Morley Ernstein then descended, gave his name, and was ushered up a flight of stairs, having a centre line of neat stair carpet, not much wider than one's hand. The drawing-room into which he was shewn was very nicely furnished with a number of little ornaments, not indeed of the kind that could be purchased, but of the sort which a dexterous and tasteful female-hand can produce, to trick out and decorate the simplest habitation. There was a small piano in one corner of the room, a Spanish guitar, with a blue ribbon, lying on the sofa, a pile of music on the top of the piano, some very well executed landscapes lying, half finished, on the table, together with a box of colours, and a glass of water. All, in short, bespoke taste and skill, and that graceful occupation of leisure hours, which is so seldom found uncombined with a fine mind.

The room was empty of human beings, and while Morley was making his survey, he heard the maid-servant run up stairs to another flight, and say--"Master William--Master William, there is a gentleman below in the drawing-room wishes to speak to you."

There was no reply; and after some running about, the girl returned to say, that Master William had gone out without her knowing it. As she spoke, however, there was a knock at the door, and, exclaiming, "Oh! there he is!" she ran down to open it.

Morley Ernstein remained in the middle of the drawing-room, with the door partly unclosen, so as to allow him to hear the murmur of voices in the passage below, and the moment after, some light foot-steps ascending the stairs. They were not the steps of a man, and ere he could ask himself, "What next?" the door of the room opened wide, and a young lady entered the room, whose appearance answered too well the description which had been given, for him to doubt that she was the late possessor of the diamond ear-rings.

She seemed to be about nineteen; and, both in features and figure, was exceedingly beautiful. Dressed in mourning, there could be no bright colours in her apparel, but every garment was so arranged as tastefully to suit the other; and the whole was in the very best style, if not absolutely from the hands of the most fashionable dressmaker. Yet all was plain--there was nothing at all superfluous; and, indeed, her beauty required it not. The luxuriant dark hair clustered under the close bonnet, and contrasted finely with the pure, fair skin, warmed by a bright blush, like that of a rose, which one could hardly believe that the air of London would leave long unwithered. The large and dark, but soft eyes, spoke mind and feeling too; though there was an occasional flash of brightness in them, which seemed to say, that mirth had not always been so completely banished as it seemed at this moment. The whole face looked but the more lovely from the darkness of her garb; and the beautiful small foot and ancle were certainly not displayed to disadvantage in the tight-fitting black silk stockings and well-made shoe. She bowed distantly to Morley, as she entered the room, with a look that expressed no sort of pleasure, adding--"The servant tells me, sir, that you wish to see my brother. He will be here in five minutes; for I left him only at a little distance, at a shop where he wanted to purchase something. Will you not sit down?"

She pointed coldly to a chair, and as she spoke, began removing the drawings from the table; but Morley replied--"Perhaps I had better return again; I fear I interrupt you."

The lady looked up with an air of hesitation--

"Indeed, sir," she said, after a moment's pause, "I do not know well how to reply to you. My brother will be angry, perhaps, if I say what I think, and yet--"

Morley was not a little surprised at this unfinished reply, and he answered, with interest, which, it is not to be denied, was increasing every moment under all he heard and saw--

"Pray explain yourself, madam. I think you must be under some mistake; but at all events, your brother cannot be made angry by what you say; for of course, unless you desire it, I shall never repeat it to him, or to any one."

"Well then, sir," she said, gravely and sadly, "I was going to say, however rude and harsh you may think it, that I certainly would rather that you did not wait for my brother, and cannot but hope that he may be absent also when you come again."

Morley smiled at this very strange reception, but still he could not help thinking that there was some mistake. "Indeed, Miss Barham." he replied, "this is so unexpected and extraordinary, that I rather believe you are in error regarding me."

"Oh, no!" replied the lady in the same tone; "his description, sir, was very accurate. Are you not Mr. Neville?"

"Oh, no!" answered Morley, with a smile, "my name is Morley Ernstein, and I came with a view of doing your brother good and not harm."