ficed to no Graces; he would have
thrown Lord Chesterfield into a fever. Not that he was ever vulgar,
for vulgarity implies affectation of refinement; but he talked loud and
laughed loud if the whim seized him, and rubbed his great hands with a
boyish heartiness of glee if he discomfited an adversary in argument.
Or, sometimes, he would sit abstracted and moody, and answer briefly
and boorishly those who interrupted him. Young men were mostly afraid of
him, though he wanted but fame to have a set of admiring disciples. Old
men censured his presumption and recoiled from the novelty of his ideas.
Women alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight into
character, they generally do what is honest and sterling. Some strange
failings, too, had John Ardworth,--some of the usual vagaries and
contradictions of clever men. As a system, he was rigidly abstemious.
For days together he would drink nothing but water, eat nothing but
bread, or hard biscuit, or a couple of eggs; then, having wound up
some allotted portion of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a
self-saturnalia,--would stride off with old college friends to an inn
in one of the suburbs, and spend, as he said triumphantly, "a day of
blessed debauch!" Innocent enough, for the most part, the debauch was,
consisting in cracking jests, stringing puns, a fish dinner, perhaps,
and an extra bottle or two of fiery port. Sometimes this jollity,
which was always loud and uproarious, found its scene in one of the
cider-cellars or midnight taverns; but Ardworth's labours on the Press
made that latter dissipation extremely rare. These relaxations were
always succeeded by a mien more than usually grave, a manner more than
usually curt and ungracious, an application more than ever rigorous
and intense. John Ardworth was not a good-tempered man, but he was the
best-natured man that ever breathed. He was, like all ambitious persons,
very much occupied with self; and yet it would have been a ludicrous
misapplication of words to call him selfish. Even the desire of fame
which absorbed him was but a part of benevolence,--a desire to promote
justice and to serve his kind.

John Ardworth's shaggy brows were bent over his open volumes when his
clerk entered noiselessly and placed on his table a letter which the
twopenny-postman had just delivered. With an impatient shrug of the
shoulders, Ardworth glanced towards the superscription; but his eye
became earnest and his