aid across its course. But love in a strong
nature is a very different thing from the same amount of love in a
feeble nature. If it had been her own property and career that had to
be given up for his sake, her love would have probably conquered all
private ambition; but the very high estimation in which she held her
cousin, fought against her instinctive wish to make him happy. And if
the irrevocable step were taken, what security would she have that he
might not regret it?

She dwelt in her own mind on the disparities between them, which, but
for the peculiar circumstances in which they had been placed by her
uncle's will, must have prevented the formation even of the friendship,
now so close and so precious. She was perhaps scarcely aware that such
contrasts are more favourable to the growth and the continuance of love
than too near resemblance in character and temperament. She was so
different in many ways from him--he was literary--she was practical; he
was poetical and artistic, and by no means scientific--she was
destitute of taste, and saw more romance in the wonders of science than
in much of the poetry he admired so much; he was aristocratic by
temperament, and only forced by her influence at the turning-point of
his life into her democratic views--she could not rest from the
over-activity of her nature, while he liked repose, meditative,
literary, and DILETTANTI. The strong sense of duty, which certainly was
the guiding principle of his nature, led him to exertion; while Jane
worked because she could not help it. With Jane's temperament Francis
never would have stayed for fifteen years clerk in the Bank of
Scotland, while there were new countries to conquer, or new fields to
work in. He found pleasure in beautiful things; all disorder or
disorganization was positively painful to him. To begin again a life of
comparative poverty, burdened with the care of Elsie, would be far more
trying to him than to her; for though she had been brought up in
greater affluence, she cared less for the elegances of life. She loved
him far too well to allow him to sacrifice a great deal more than she
thought she was worth for such a doubtful good, and she entered heart
and soul into the prospects of this election, as the thing which would
decide Francis' fate, and would give him still nobler work to do, to
keep him from regretting what it was better he should not obtain.

The spiritual communication on the subject of Francis' h