--it
falters--fades--droops--and--ha--ha--ha! poor idler, the fuel is
consumed--and--it is darkness."

As Warner uttered these words his eyes reeled; the room swam before him;
the excitement of his feeble frame had reached its highest pitch; the
disease of many weeks had attained its crisis; and, tottering back a
few paces, he fell upon the floor, the victim of a delirious and raging
fever.

But it was not thus that the young artist was to die. He was reserved
for a death that, like his real nature, had in it more of gentleness and
poetry. He recovered by slow degrees, and his mind, almost in spite of
himself, returned to that profession from which it was impossible to
divert the thoughts and musings of many years. Not that he resumed the
pencil and the easel: on the contrary, he could not endure them in his
sight; they appeared, to a mind festered and sore, like a memorial and
monument of shame. But he nursed within him a strong and ardent desire
to become a pilgrim to that beautiful land of which he had so often
dreamed, and which the innocent destroyer of his peace had pointed out
as the theatre of inspiration and the nursery of future fame.

The physicians who, at Talbot's instigation, attended him, looked at his
hectic cheek and consumptive frame, and readily flattered his desire;
and Talbot, no less interested in Warner's behalf on his own account
than bound by his promise to Clarence, generously extended to the
artist that bounty which is the most precious prerogative of the rich.
Notwithstanding her extreme age, his grandmother insisted upon attending
him: there is in the heart of woman so deep a well of love that no
age can freeze it. They made the voyage: they reached the shore of the
myrtle and the vine, and entered the Imperial City. The air of Rome
seemed at first to operate favourably upon the health of the English
artist. His strength appeared to increase, his spirit to expand; and
though he had relapsed into more than his original silence and reserve,
he resumed, with apparent energy, the labours of the easel: so that
they who looked no deeper than the surface might have imagined the scar
healed, and the real foundation of future excellence begun.

But while Warner most humbled himself before the gods of the pictured
world; while the true principles of the mighty art opened in their
fullest glory on his soul; precisely at this very moment shame and
despondency were most bitter at his heart: and while