he great
commonwealth of the Beautiful or the Honest; and both belong to and make
up the Useful. But in politics, and in a highly artificial state, what
doubts beset us! what darkness surrounds! If we connive at abuses, we
juggle with our own reason and integrity--if we attack them, how much,
how fatally we may derange that solemn and conventional ORDER which is
the mainspring of the vast machine! How little, too, can one man, whose
talents may not be in that coarse road--in that mephitic atmosphere, be
enabled to effect!"

"He may effect a vast deal even without eloquence or labour:--he may
effect a vast deal, if he can set one example, amidst a crowd of selfish
aspirants and heated fanatics, of an honest and dispassionate man.
He may effect more, if he may serve among the representatives of that
hitherto unrepresented thing--Literature; if he redeem, by an ambition
above place and emolument, the character for subservience that
court-poets have obtained for letters--if he may prove that speculative
knowledge is not disjoined from the practical world, and maintain the
dignity of disinterestedness that should belong to learning. But the
end of a scientific morality is not to serve others only, but also to
perfect and accomplish our individual selves; our own souls are a solemn
trust to our own lives. You are about to add to your experience of human
motives and active men; and whatever additional wisdom you acquire
will become equally evident and equally useful, no matter whether it be
communicated through action or in books. Enough of this, my dear Ernest.
I have come to dine with you, and make you accompany me to-night to
a house where you will be welcome, and I think interested. Nay,
no excuses. I have promised Lord Latimer that he shall make your
acquaintance, and he is one of the most eminent men with whom political
life will connect you."

And to this change of habits, from the closet to the senate, had
Maltravers been induced by a state of health, which, with most men,
would have been an excuse for indolence. Indolent he could not be; he
had truly said to Ferrers, that "action was the condition of his being."
If THOUGHT, with its fever and aching tension, had been too severe a
taskmaster on the nerves and brain, the coarse and homely pursuit of
practical politics would leave the imagination and intellect in repose,
while it would excite the hardier qualities and gifts, which animate
without exhausting. So, at lea