ange epistles), "and I
am almost equally angry whether fools presume to praise or to blame you.
This miserable world we live in, how I loathe and disdain it!--yet I
desire you to serve and to master it! Weak contradiction, effeminate
paradox! Oh! rather a thousand times that you would fly from its mean
temptations and poor rewards!--if the desert were your dwelling-place
and you wished one minister, I could renounce all--wealth, flattery,
repute, womanhood--to serve you.

* * * * *

"I once admired you for your genius. My disease has fastened on me,
and I now almost worship you for yourself. I have seen you, Ernest
Maltravers,--seen you often,--and when you never suspected that these
eyes were on you. Now that I have seen, I understand you better. We can
not judge men by their books and deeds. Posterity can know nothing of
the beings of the past. A thousand books never written--a thousand deeds
never done--are in the eyes and lips of the few greater than the herd.
In that cold, abstracted gaze, that pale and haughty brow, I read the
disdain of obstacles, which is worthy of one who is confident of the
goal. But my eyes fill with tears when I survey you!--you are sad, you
are alone! If failures do not mortify you, success does not elevate. Oh,
Maltravers, I, woman as I am, and living in a narrow circle, I, even
I, know at last that to have desires nobler, and ends more august, than
others, is but to surrender waking life to morbid and melancholy dreams.

* * * * *

"Go more into the world, Maltravers--go more into the world, or quit
it altogether. Your enemies must be met; they accumulate, they grow
strong--you are too tranquil, too slow in your steps towards the
prize which should be yours, to satisfy my impatience, to satisfy
your friends. Be less refined in your ambition that you may be more
immediately useful. The feet of clay after all are the swiftest in the
race. Even Lumley Ferrers will outstrip you if you do not take heed.

* * * * *

"Why do I run on thus!--you--you love another, yet you are not less
the ideal that I could love--if ever I loved any one. You love--and
yet--well--no matter."

CHAPTER II.

"Well, but this is being only an official nobleman. No matter,
'tis still being a nobleman, and that's his aim."
_Anonymous writer of 1772_.

"La musique est le seul des talens qui jouissent de lui-meme;
tons les autres veulent des temoins."*--MARMONTEL.

* Music is the sole talent w