lead you away from the vanities of worldly ambition to the fulness of
that joy which the good inherit.

----Is Laura Dalton such an one?

VIII.

_A Broken Hope._

Youthful passion is a giant. It overleaps all the dreams, and all the
resolves of our better and quieter nature; and drives madly toward some
wild issue, that lives only in its frenzy. How little account does
passion take of goodness! It is not within the cycle of its revolution:
it is below; it is tamer; it is older; it wears no wings.

And your proud heart flashing back to the memory of that sparkling eye
which lighted your hope--full-fed upon the vanities of cloister
learning, drives your soberer visions to the wind. As you recall those
tones, so full of brilliancy and pride, the quiet virtues fade, like the
soft haze upon a spring landscape driven westward by a swift, sea-born
storm. The pulse bounds; the eyes flash; the heart trembles with its
sharp springs. Hope dilates, like the eye, fed with swift blood leaping
to the brain.

Again the image of Miss Dalton, so fine, so noble, so womanly, fills and
bounds the Future. The lingering tears of grief drop away from your eye,
as the lingering loves of boyhood drop from your scalding passion, or
drip into clouds of vapor.

You listen to the calm, thoughtful advice of the father, with a deep
consciousness of something stronger than his counsels seething in your
bosom. The words of caution, of instruction, of guidance, fall upon your
heated imagination like the night-dews upon the crater of an AEtna. They
are beneficent and healthful for the straggling herbage upon the surface
of the mountain, but they do not reach or temper the inner fires that
are rolling their billows of flame beneath!

You drop hints from time to time, to those with whom you are most
familiar, of some prospective change of condition. There is a new and
cheerful interest in the building-plans of your neighbors,--a new and
cheerful study of the principles of domestic architecture,--in which
very elegant boudoirs, adorned with harps, hold prominent place; and
libraries with gilt-bound books, very rich in lyrical and dramatic
poetry; fine views from bay-windows; graceful pots of flowers;
sleek-looking Italian greyhounds; cheerful sunlight; musical goldfinches
chattering on the wall; superb pictures of princesses in peasant
dresses; soft Axminster carpets; easy-acting bell-pulls; gigantic
candelabrums; porcelain vases of class