uess

The issue of the earth's great business,

When we shall be, as we no longer are,

Like babbling gossips, safe, who hear the war

Of winds, and sigh!--but tremble not!"

Much in him was a type, or rather forerunner, of the intellectual spirit
that broke forth when we were children, among our countrymen, and is now
slowly dying away amidst the loud events and absorbing struggles of
the awakening world. But in one respect he stood aloof from all his
tribe--in his hard indifference to worldly ambition, and his contempt of
fame. As some sages have seemed to think the universe a dream, and self
the only reality, so in his austere and collected reliance upon his own
mind--the gathering in, as it were, of his resources, he appeared to
consider the pomps of the world as shadows, and the life of his own
spirit the only substance. He had built a city and a tower within the
Shinar of his own heart, whence he might look forth, unscathed and
unmoved, upon the deluge that broke over the rest of earth.

Only in one instance, and that, as we have seen, after much struggle, he
had given way to the emotions that agitate his kind, and had surrendered
himself to the dominion of another. This was against his theories--but
what theories ever resist love? In yielding, however, thus far, he
seemed more on his guard than ever against a broader encroachment. He
had admitted one 'fair spirit' for his 'minister,' but it was only with
a deeper fervour to invoke 'the desert' as 'his dwelling-place.' Thus,
when the Earl, who, like most practical judges of mankind, loved to
apply to each individual the motives that actuate the mass, and who only
unwillingly, and somewhat sceptically, assented to the exceptions,
and was driven to search for peculiar clues to the eccentric
instance,--finding, to his secret triumph, that Aram had admitted one
intruding emotion into his boasted circle of indifference, imagined that
he should easily induce him (the spell once broken) to receive another,
he was surprised and puzzled to discover himself in the wrong.

Lord--at that time had been lately called into the administration, and
he was especially anxious to secure the support of all the talent that
he could enlist in its behalf. The times were those in which party ran
high, and in which individual political writings were honoured with an
importance which the periodical press in general has now almost wholly
monopolized. On the