employed in rebuilding, on a yet more costly scale,
my ancestral mansion. So eager and impatient is my desire for the
completion of my undertaking that I allow rest neither by night nor day,
and half of the work will be done by torchlight. With the success of
this project terminates my last scheme of Ambition.

Here, then, at the age of thirty-four, I conclude the history of my
life. Whether in the star which, as I now write, shines in upon me, and
which a romance, still unsubdued, has often dreamed to be the bright
prophet of my fate, something of future adventure, suffering, or
excitement is yet predestined to me; or whether life will muse itself
away in the solitudes which surround the home of my past childhood and
the scene of my present retreat,--creates within me but slight food
for anticipation or conjecture. I have exhausted the sources of those
feelings which flow, whether through the channels of anxiety or of hope,
towards the future; and the restlessness of my manhood, having attained
its last object, has done the labour of time, and bequeathed to me the
indifference of age.

If love exists for me no longer, I know well that the memory of that
which has been is to me far more than a living love is to others; and
perhaps there is no passion so full of tender, of soft, and of hallowing
associations as the love which is stamped by death. If I have borne
much, and my spirit has worked out its earthly end in travail and in
tears, yet I would not forego the lessons which my life has bequeathed
me, even though they be deeply blended with sadness and regret. No! were
I asked what best dignifies the present and consecrates the past; what
enables us alone to draw a just moral from the tale of life; what sheds
the purest light upon our reason; what gives the firmest strength to
our religion; and, whether our remaining years pass in seclusion or in
action, is best fitted to soften the heart of man, and to elevate the
soul to God,--I would answer, with Lassus, "it is EXPERIENCE!"

End of Project Gutenberg's Devereux, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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