, "that last gust swept by; you remember that
beautiful couplet in Tibullus,--

'Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem,
Et dominam tenero detinuisse sinu.'"
["Sweet on our couch to hear the winds above,
And cling with closer heart to her we love."]

"Ay," answered Mordaunt, with a scarcely audible sigh, "that is the
feeling of the lover at the immites ventos, but we sages of the lamp
make our mistress Wisdom, and when the winds rage without it is to her
that we cling. See how, from the same object, different conclusions are
drawn! The most common externals of nature, the wind and the wave, the
stars and the heavens, the very earth on which we tread, never excite in
different bosoms the same ideas; and it is from our own hearts, and not
from an outward source, that we draw the hues which colour the web of
our existence."

"It is true," answered Clarence. "You remember that in two specks of the
moon the enamoured maiden perceived two unfortunate lovers, while the
ambitious curate conjectured that they were the spires of a cathedral?
But it is not only to our feelings, but also to our reasonings, that we
give the colours which they wear. The moral, for instance, which to one
man seems atrocious, to another is divine. On the tendency of the same
work what three people will agree? And how shall the most sanguine
moralist hope to benefit mankind when he finds that, by the multitude,
his wisest endeavours to instruct are often considered but as
instruments to pervert?"

"I believe," answered Mordaunt, "that it is from our ignorance that our
contentions flow: we debate with strife and with wrath, with bickering
and with hatred; but of the thing debated upon we remain in the
profoundest darkness. Like the labourers of Babel, while we endeavour
in vain to express our meaning to each other, the fabric by which, for
a common end, we would have ascended to heaven from the ills of earth
remains forever unadvanced and incomplete. Let us hope that knowledge
is the universal language which shall reunite us. As, in their sublime
allegory, the Ancients signified that only through virtue we arrive at
honour, so let us believe that only through knowledge can we arrive at
virtue!"

"And yet," said Clarence, "that seems a melancholy truth for the mass of
the people, who have no time for the researches of wisdom."

"Not so much so as at first we might imagine," answered Mordaunt: "the
few smooth all paths for the many. Th