for knowledge which day and night kept all his faculties in a
stretch; made strange havoc in a constitution naturally strong. The poor
author! how few persons understand; and forbear with, and pity him!
He sells his health and youth to a rugged taskmaster. And, O blind and
selfish world, you expect him to be as free of manner, and as pleasant
of cheer, and as equal of mood, as if he were passing the most agreeable
and healthful existence that pleasure could afford to smooth the
wrinkles of the mind, or medicine invent to regulate the nerves of
the body. But there was, besides all this, another cause that operated
against the successful man!--His heart was too solitary. He lived
without the sweet household ties--the connections and amities he formed
excited for a moment, but possessed no charm to comfort or to soothe.
Cleveland resided so much in the country, and was of so much calmer
a temperament, and so much more advanced in age, that, with all the
friendship that subsisted between them, there was none of that daily and
familiar interchange of confidence which affectionate natures demand
as the very food of life. Of his brother (as the reader will conjecture
from never having been formally presented to him) Ernest saw but little.
Colonel Maltravers, one of the gayest and handsomest men of his time,
married a fine lady, lived principally at Paris, except when, for a
few weeks in the shooting season, he filled his country house with
companions who had nothing in common with Ernest: the brothers
corresponded regularly every quarter, and saw each other once a
year--this was all their intercourse. Ernest Maltravers stood in the
world alone, with that cold but anxious spectre--Reputation.

It was late at night. Before a table covered with the monuments of
erudition and thought sat a young man with a pale and worn countenance.
The clock in the room told with a fretting distinctness every moment
that lessened the journey to the grave. There was an anxious and
expectant expression on the face of the student, and from time to time
he glanced to the clock, and muttered to himself. Was it a letter from
some adored mistress--the soothing flattery from some mighty arbiter of
arts and letters--that the young man eagerly awaited? No; the aspirer
was forgotten in the valetudinarian. Ernest Maltravers was waiting the
visit of his physician, whom at that late hour a sudden thought had
induced him to summon from his rest. At length the w