ct of the ocean.

"I will tell you your thoughts, Clarence," said Mervale, laughing,
"though I am no Zanoni. I know them by the moisture of your eyes,
and the half-smile on your lips. You are musing upon that fair
perdition,--the little singer of San Carlo."

The little singer of San Carlo! Glyndon coloured as he answered,--

"Would you speak thus of her if she were my wife?"

"No! for then any contempt I might venture to feel would be for
yourself. One may dislike the duper, but it is the dupe that one
despises."

"Are you sure that I should be the dupe in such a union? Where can I
find one so lovely and so innocent,--where one whose virtue has been
tried by such temptation? Does even a single breath of slander sully the
name of Viola Pisani?"

"I know not all the gossip of Naples, and therefore cannot answer; but I
know this, that in England no one would believe that a young Englishman,
of good fortune and respectable birth, who marries a singer from the
theatre of Naples, has not been lamentably taken in. I would save you
from a fall of position so irretrievable. Think how many mortifications
you will be subjected to; how many young men will visit at your
house,--and how many young wives will as carefully avoid it."

"I can choose my own career, to which commonplace society is not
essential. I can owe the respect of the world to my art, and not to the
accidents of birth and fortune."

"That is, you still persist in your second folly,--the absurd ambition
of daubing canvas. Heaven forbid I should say anything against the
laudable industry of one who follows such a profession for the sake of
subsistence; but with means and connections that will raise you in life,
why voluntarily sink into a mere artist? As an accomplishment in leisure
moments, it is all very well in its way; but as the occupation of
existence, it is a frenzy."

"Artists have been the friends of princes."

"Very rarely so, I fancy, in sober England. There in the great centre of
political aristocracy, what men respect is the practical, not the ideal.
Just suffer me to draw two pictures of my own. Clarence Glyndon returns
to England; he marries a lady of fortune equal to his own, of friends
and parentage that advance rational ambition. Clarence Glyndon, thus a
wealthy and respectable man, of good talents, of bustling energies then
concentrated, enters into practical life. He has a house at which he can
receive those whose acquaintance is both