trangers, with different tastes and of different ages, and
we must learn to adapt ourselves to their minds, and our temptations to
their passions, if we wish to fascinate or even to content them. Let me
then call your attention to the hints and maxims which I have in this
paper amused myself with drawing up for your instruction. Write to me
from time to time, and I will, in replying to your letters, give you
the best advice in my power. For the rest, my dear boy, I have only to
request that you will be frank, and I, in my turn, will promise that
when I cannot assist, I will never reprove. And now, Clarence, as the
hour is late and you leave us early tomorrow, I will no longer detain
you. God bless you and keep you. You are going to enjoy life,--I
to anticipate death; so that you can find in me little congenial to
yourself; but as the good Pope said to our Protestant countryman,
'Whatever the difference between us, I know well that an old man's
blessing is never without its value.'"

As Clarence clasped his benefactor's hand, the tears gushed from his
eyes. Is there one being, stubborn as the rock to misfortune, whom
kindness does not affect? For my part, kindness seems to me to come with
a double grace and tenderness from the old; it seems in them the hoarded
and long purified benevolence of years; as if it had survived and
conquered the baseness and selfishness of the ordeal it had passed; as
if the winds, which had broken the form, had swept in vain across the
heart, and the frosts which had chilled the blood and whitened the thin
locks had possessed no power over the warm tide of the affections. It
is the triumph of nature over art; it is the voice of the angel which
is yet within us. Nor is this all: the tenderness of age is twice
blessed,--blessed in its trophies over the obduracy of encrusting and
withering years, blessed because it is tinged with the sanctity of the
grave; because it tells us that the heart will blossom even upon
the precincts of the tomb, and flatters us with the inviolacy and
immortality of love.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Cannot I create,
Cannot I form, cannot I fashion forth
Another world, another universe?--KEATS.

The next morning Clarence, in his way out of town, directed his carriage
(the last and not the least acceptable present from Talbot) to stop at
Warner's door. Although it was scarcely sunrise, the aged grandmother
of the artist was stirring, and opened the door t