ne's spleen to think one is so little as to be
useful to them. Thus a good name is only the good name of a sect, and
the members of that sect are only marvellous proper knaves."

"But posterity does justice to those who really deserve fame."

"Posterity! Can you believe that a man who knows what life is cares
for the penny whistles of grown children after his death? Posterity,
Lucy,--no! Posterity is but the same perpetuity of fools and rascals;
and even were justice desirable at their hands, they could not deal it.
Do men agree whether Charles Stuart was a liar or a martyr? For how
many ages have we believed Nero a monster! A writer now asks, as if
demonstrating a problem, what real historian could doubt that Nero was
a paragon? The patriarchs of Scripture have been declared by modern
philosophy to be a series of astronomical hieroglyphs; and, with greater
show of truth, we are assured that the patriot Tell never existed!
Posterity! the word has gulled men enough without my adding to the
number. I, who loathe the living, can scarcely venerate the unborn.
Lucy, believe me that no man can mix largely with men in political life,
and not despise everything that in youth he adored! Age leaves us only
one feeling,--contempt!"

"Are you belied, then?" said Lucy, pointing to a newspaper, the organ of
the party opposed to Brandon: "are you belied when you are here called
'ambitious'? When they call you 'selfish' and 'grasping,' I know they
wrong you; but I confess that I have thought you ambitious; yet can he
who despises men desire their good opinion?"

"Their good opinion!" repeated Brandon, mockingly: "do we want the bray
of the asses we ride? No!" he resumed, after a pause. "It is power, not
honour; it is the hope of elevating oneself in every respect, in the
world without as well as in the world of one's own mind: it is this hope
which makes me labour where I might rest, and will continue the labour
to my grave. Lucy," continued Brandon, fixing his keen eyes on his
niece, "have you no ambition,--have power and pomp and place no charm
for your mind?"

"None!" said Lucy, quietly and simply.

"Indeed! yet there are times when I have thought I recognized my blood
in your veins. You are sprung from a once noble, but a fallen race. Are
you ever susceptible to the weakness of ancestral pride?"

"You say," answered Lucy, "that we should care not for those who live
after us; much less, I imagine, should we care for those who