ntented to abide his time.

Every day he grew more attached to that true philosophy which makes a
man, as far as the world will permit, a world to himself; and from the
height of a tranquil and serene self-esteem, he felt the sun shine above
him, when malignant clouds spread sullen and ungenial below. He did not
despise or wilfully shock opinion, neither did he fawn upon and flatter
it. Where he thought the world should be humoured, he humoured--where
contemned, he contemned it. There are many cases in which an honest,
well-educated, high-hearted individual is a much better judge than the
multitude of what is right and what is wrong; and in these matters he is
not worth three straws if he suffer the multitude to bully or coax him
out of his judgment. The Public, if you indulge it, is a most damnable
gossip, thrusting its nose into people's concerns, where it has no right
to make or meddle; and in those things, where the Public is impertinent,
Maltravers scorned and resisted its interference as haughtily as he
would the interference of any insolent member of the insolent whole.
It was this mixture of deep love and profound respect for the eternal
PEOPLE, and of calm, passionless disdain for that capricious charlatan,
the momentary PUBLIC, which made Ernest Maltravers an original and
solitary thinker; and an actor, in reality modest and benevolent, in
appearance arrogant and unsocial. "Pauperism, in contradistinction to
poverty," he was wont to say, "is the dependence upon other people for
existence, not on our own exertions; there is a moral pauperism in
the man who is dependent on others for that support of moral
life--self-respect."

Wrapped in this philosophy, he pursued his haughty and lonesome way,
and felt that in the deep heart of mankind, when prejudices and envies
should die off, there would be a sympathy with his motives and his
career. So far as his own health was concerned, the experiment
had answered. No mere drudgery of business--late hours and dull
speeches--can produce the dread exhaustion which follows the efforts
of the soul to mount into the higher air of severe thought or intense
imagination. Those faculties which had been overstrained now lay
fallow--and the frame rapidly regained its tone. Of private comfort and
inspiration Ernest knew but little. He gradually grew estranged from his
old friend Ferrers, as their habits became opposed. Cleveland lived more
and more in the country, and was too well s