s! Oh, my father, I am young; I feel a power in
myself which is not a common one--my heart throbs for a freer and more
beautiful life! Desire not that I should constrain my own nature: desire
not that I should compress my beautiful talents into a sphere which has
no charms for me!"

"I do not depreciate, certainly, the profession of the artist," replied
the Judge, "nor the value of his agency: in its best meaning, his is as
noble as any; but is it this pure bent, this noble view of it, which
impels you, which animates you? Sara, examine your own heart; it is
vanity and selfish ambition which impel you. It is the arrogance of your
eighteen years, and some degree of talent, which make you overlook all
that is good in your present lot, which make you disdain to mature
yourself nobly and independently in the domestic circle. It is a deep
mistake, which will now lead you to an act blamable in the eyes of God
and man, and which blinds you to the dark side of the life which you
covet. Nevertheless, there is none darker, none in which the changes of
fortune are more dependent on miserable accidents. An accident may
deprive you of your beauty, or your voice, and with these you lose the
favour of the world in which you have placed your happiness. Besides
this, you will not always continue at eighteen, Sara: by the time you
are thirty all your glory will be past, and then--then what will you
have collected for the remaining half of life? You will have rioted for
a short time in order then to starve; since, so surely as I stand here,
with this haughty and vain disposition, and with the husband whom you
will have chosen, you will come to want; and, too late, you will look
back in your misery, full of remorse, to the virtue and to the true life
which you have renounced."

Sara was silent; she was shaken by the words and by the countenance of
her adopted father.

"And how perfectly different it might be!" continued he, with warmth;
"how beautiful, how full of blessing might not your life and your
talents be! Sara! I have loved you, and love you still, like my own
daughter--will you not listen to me as to a father? Answer me--have you
had to give up anything in this house, which, with any show of reason,
you might demand? and have we spared any possible care for your
education or your accomplishments?"

"No," replied Sara, sighing; "all have been kind, very kind to me."

"Well, then," exclaimed the Judge, with increasing warmth an