el
wherein they may empty themselves; and were he to follow the guidance
of those feelings, of which in that riper life he seems ashamed as of a
weakness unworthy his sex, in the warm and glowing bosom of Nature's
divinity--WOMAN--would he pour forth the swollen tide of his affection;
and acknowledge, in the fullness of his expanding heart, the vast
bounty of Providence, who had bestowed on him so invaluable--so
unspeakably invaluable, a blessing.--But no; in the pursuit of
ambition, in the acquisition of wealth, in the thirst after power, and
the craving after distinction, nay, nineteen times out of twenty, in
the most frivolous occupations, the most unsatisfactory amusements, do
the great mass of the maturer man sink those feelings; divested of
which, we become mere plodders on the earth, mere creatures of
materialism: nor is it until after age and infirmity have overtaken
them, they look back with regret to that real and substantial, but
unenjoyed happiness, which the occupied heart and the soul's communion
alone can bestow. Then indeed, when too late, are they ready to
acknowledge the futility of those pursuits, the inadequacy of those
mere ephemeral pleasures, to which in the full meridian of their
manhood they sacrificed, as a thing unworthy of their dignity, the
mysterious charm of woman's influence and woman's beauty.

We do not mean to say Clara de Haldimar would have fallen short of the
high estimate formed of her worth by the friend of her brother; neither
is it to be understood, Sir Everard suffered this fair vision of his
fancy to lead him into the wild and labyrinthian paths of boyish
romance; but certain it is, the floating illusions, conjured up by his
imagination, exercised a mysterious influence over his heart, that
hourly acquired a deeper and less equivocal character. It might have
been curiosity in the first instance, or that mere repose of the fancy
upon an object of its own creation, which was natural to a young man
placed like himself for the moment out of the pale of all female
society. It has been remarked, and justly, there is nothing so
dangerous to the peace of the human heart as solitude. It is in
solitude, our thoughts, taking their colouring from our feelings,
invest themselves with the power of multiplying ideal beauty, until we
become in a measure tenants of a world of our own creation, from which
we never descend, without loathing and disgust, into the dull and
matter-of-fact routine