ecollection, we talked about Plato; but
I had now become so impatient to rejoin Isora that I did not accord to
my worthy host the patient attention I had hitherto given him. When I
took leave of him he blessed me, and placed a piece of paper in my hand;
"Do not open this," said he, "till you are at least two miles hence;
your curiosity will then be satisfied. If ever you travel this road
again, or if ever you pass by Cheshunt, pause and see if the old
philosopher is dead. Adieu!"

And so we parted.

You may be sure that I had not passed the appointed distance of two
miles very far, when I opened the paper and read the following words:--

Perhaps, young stranger, at some future period of a life, which I
venture to foretell will be adventurous and eventful, it may afford you
a matter for reflection, or a resting-spot for a moral, to remember that
you have seen, in old age and obscurity, the son of him who shook an
empire, avenged a people, and obtained a throne, only to be the victim
of his own passions and the dupe of his own reason. I repeat now the
question I before put to you,--Was the fate of the great Protector
fairer than that of the despised and forgotten

RICHARD CROMWELL?

"So," thought I, "it is indeed with the son of the greatest ruler
England, or perhaps, in modern times, Europe has ever produced, that I
have held this conversation upon content! Yes, perhaps your fate is more
to be envied than that of your illustrious father; but who _would_ envy
it more? Strange that while we pretend that happiness is the object of
all desire, happiness is the last thing which we covet. Love and wealth
and pleasure and honour,--these are the roads which we take so long
that, accustomed to the mere travel, we forget that it was first
undertaken not for the course but the goal; and in the common
infatuation which pervades all our race, we make the toil the meed, and
in following the means forsake the end."

I never saw my host again; very shortly afterwards he died:* I and Fate,
which had marked with so strong a separation the lives of the father and
the son, united in that death--as its greatest, so its only universal
blessing--the philosopher and the recluse with the warrior and the
chief!

* Richard Cromwell died in 1712--ED.

CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH THE HERO SHOWS DECISION ON MORE POINTS THAN ONE.--MORE OF
ISORA'S CHARACTER IS DEVELOPED.

To use the fine image in the "Arcadia," it was "when