l the web that we have woven--until the tomb closes over
us, and men, just when it is too late, strike the fair balance between
ourselves and our rivals; and we are measured, not by the least, but
by the greatest triumphs we have achieved. Oh, what a crushing sense of
impotence comes over us, when we feel that our frame cannot support our
mind--when the hand can no longer execute what the soul, actively as
ever, conceives and desires!--the quick life tied to the dead form--the
ideas fresh as immortality, gushing forth rich and golden, and the
broken nerves, and the aching frame, and the weary eyes!--the spirit
athirst for liberty and heaven--and the damning, choking consciousness
that we are walled up and prisoned in a dungeon that must be our
burial-place! Talk not of freedom--there is no such thing as freedom to
a man whose body is the gaol, whose infirmities are the racks, of his
genius!

Maltravers paused at last, and threw himself on his sofa, wearied and
exhausted. Involuntarily, and as a half unconscious means of escaping
from his conflicting and profitless emotions, he turned to several
letters, which had for hours lain unopened on his table. Every one, the
seal of which he broke, seemed to mock his state--every one seemed to
attest the felicity of his fortunes. Some bespoke the admiring sympathy
of the highest and wisest--one offered him a brilliant opening into
public life--another (it was from Cleveland) was fraught with all the
proud and rapturous approbation of a prophet whose auguries are at last
fulfilled. At that letter Maltravers sighed deeply, and paused before he
turned to the others. The last he opened was in an unknown hand, nor was
any name affixed to it. Like all writers of some note, Maltravers was
in the habit of receiving anonymous letters of praise, censure, warning,
and exhortation--especially from young ladies at boarding schools, and
old ladies in the country; but there was that in the first sentences of
the letter, which he now opened with a careless hand, that riveted his
attention. It was a small and beautiful handwriting, yet the letters
were more clear and bold than they usually are in feminine caligraphy.

"Ernest Maltravers," began this singular effusion, "have you weighed
yourself? Are you aware of your capacities? Do you feel that for you
there may be a more dazzling reputation that that which appears to
content you? You who seem to penetrate into the subtlest windings of the
huma