verence. In that error I will
die! If our party can struggle not with hosts, there may yet arise some
minister with the ambition of Caesar, if not his genius,--of whom a
single dagger can rid the earth!"

"And if not?" said Glendower.

"I have the same dagger for myself!" replied Wolfe, as he closed the
door.

CHAPTER XLI.

Bolingbroke has said that "Man is his own sharper and his
own bubble;" and certainly he who is acutest in duping
others is ever the most ingenious in outwitting himself. The
criminal is always a sophist; and finds in his own reason a
special pleader to twist laws human and divine into a
sanction of his crime. The rogue is so much in the habit of
cheating, that he packs the cards even when playing at
Patience with himself.--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.

The only two acquaintances in this populous city whom Glendower
possessed who were aware that in a former time he had known a better
fortune were Wolfe and a person of far higher worldly estimation, of the
name of Crauford. With the former the student had become acquainted by
the favour of chance, which had for a short time made them lodgers in
the same house. Of the particulars of Glendower's earliest history Wolfe
was utterly ignorant; but the addresses upon some old letters, which
he had accidentally seen, had informed him that Glendower had formerly
borne another name; and it was easy to glean from the student's
conversation that something of greater distinction and prosperity than
he now enjoyed was coupled with the appellation he had renounced.
Proud, melancholy, austere,--brooding upon thoughts whose very loftiness
received somewhat of additional grandeur from the gloom which encircled
it,--Glendower found, in the ruined hopes and the solitary lot of the
republican, that congeniality which neither Wolfe's habits nor the
excess of his political fervour might have afforded to a nature which
philosophy had rendered moderate and early circumstances refined.
Crauford was far better acquainted than Wolfe with the reverses
Glendower had undergone. Many years ago he had known and indeed
travelled with him upon the Continent; since then they had not met till
about six months prior to the time in which Glendower is presented to
the reader. It was in an obscure street of the city that Crauford had
then encountered Glendower, whose haunts were so little frequented by
the higher orders of society that Crauford was th