ng accumulated by study, came and found the whole man developed
and prepared. Then he rose rapidly from step to step; then, still
retaining his high enthusiasm, he enlarged his sphere of action from
the cold practice of law into those vast social improvements which law,
rightly regarded, should lead and vivify and create. Then, and long
before the twenty years he had imposed on his probation had expired, he
gazed again upon the senate and the abbey, and saw the doors of the one
open to his resolute tread, and anticipated the glorious sepulchre which
heart and brain should win him in the other. John Ardworth has never
married. When Percival rebukes him for his celibacy, his lip quivers
slightly, and he applies himself with more dogged earnestness to his
studies or his career. But he never complains that his lot is lonely or
his affections void. For him who aspires, and for him who loves, life
may lead through the thorns, but it never stops in the desert.

On the minor personages involved in this history, there is little need
to dwell. Mr. Fielden, thanks to St. John, has obtained a much better
living in the rectory of Laughton, but has found new sources of pleasant
trouble for himself in seeking to drill into the mind of Percival's
eldest son the elements of Euclid, and the principles of Latin syntax.

We may feel satisfied that the Miverses will go on much the same while
trade enriches without refining, and while, nevertheless, right feelings
in the common paths of duty may unite charitable emotions with graceless
language.

We may rest assured that the poor widow who had reared the lost son of
Lucretia received from the bounty of Percival all that could comfort her
for his death.

We have no need to track the dull crimes of Martha, or the quick,
cunning vices of Grabman, to their inevitable goals, in the hospital or
the prison, the dunghill or the gibbet.

Of the elder Ardworth our parting notice may be less brief. We first saw
him in sanguine and generous youth, with higher principles and clearer
insight into honour than William Mainwaring. We have seen him next
a spendthrift and a fugitive, his principles debased and his honour
dimmed. He presents to us no uncommon example of the corruption
engendered by that vulgar self-indulgence which mortgages the morrow
for the pleasures of to-day. No Deity presides where Prudence is absent.
Man, a world in himself, requires for the development of his faculties
patience, an