e might now, in attaining an age when ambition, often dumb
before, usually begins to make itself heard, have awakened to a more
resolute and aspiring temperament of mind. But, as it was, courted and
surrounded by all the enjoyments which are generally the reward to which
exertion looks, even an ambitious man might have forgotten his nature.
No wound to his vanity, no feeling that he was underrated (that great
spur to proud minds) excited him to those exertions we undertake in
order to belie calumny. He was "the glass of fashion," at once popular
and admired; and his good fortune in marrying the celebrated, the
wealthy, the beautiful Countess of Erpingham was, as success always is,
considered the proof of his genius, and the token of his merits.

It was certainly true, that a secret and mutual disappointment rankled
beneath the brilliant lot of the husband and wife. Godolphin exacted
from Constance more softness, more devotion, more compliance than
belonged to her nature; and Constance, on the other hand, ceased not to
repine that she found in Godolphin no sympathy with her objects, and
no feeling for her enthusiasm. As there was little congenial in their
pursuits, the one living for pleasure, the other for ambition, so there
could be no congeniality in their intercourse. They loved each other
still; they loved each other warmly; they never quarrelled; for the
temper of Constance was mild, and that of Godolphin generous: but
neither believed there was much love on the other side; and both sought
abroad that fellowship and those objects they had not in common at home.

Constance was a great favourite with the reigning king; she was
constantly invited to the narrow circle of festivities at Windsor.
Godolphin, who avoided the being bored as the greatest of earthly evils,
could not bow down his tastes and habits to any exact and precise order
of life, however distinguished the circle in which it became the rule.
Thirsting to be amused, he could not conjugate the active verb "to
amuse." No man was more fitted to adorn a court, yet no man could less
play the courtier. He admired the manners of the sovereign,--he did
homage to the natural acuteness of his understanding; but, accustomed
as he was to lay down the law in society, he was too proud to receive
it from another,--a common case among those who live with the great
by right and not through sufferance. His pride made him fear to seem a
parasite; and, too chivalrous to be d