hese primitive
landscapes, in which old associations are so little disturbed by the
modern--in which the wild turf of waste lands, vanishing deep into mazes
of solemn wood, lends the scene to dreams of gone days--brings Adventure
and Knighthood, and all the poetical colours of Old, to unite the homage
due to the ancestral dead with the future ambition of life;--Image full
of interest and of pathos--a friendless child of a race more beloved
for its decay, looking dauntless on to poverty and toil, with that
conviction of power which is born of collected purpose and earnest will;
and recording his secret vow that singlehanded he will undo the work
of destroying ages, and restore his line to its place of honour in the
land!"

George paused, and tears stood in Darrell's eyes.

"Yes," resumed the scholar--"yes, for the child, for the youth, for
the man in his first daring stride into the Action of Life, that object
commands our respectful sympathies.

"But wait a few years. Has that object expanded? Has it led on into
objects embracing humanity? Remains it alone and sterile in the bosom of
successful genius? Or is it prolific and fruitful of grander designs--of
more widespreading uses? Make genius successful, and all men have the
right to say, 'Brother, help us!' What! no other object still but to
build up a house!--to recover a line! What was grand at one stage of an
onward career, is narrow and small at another! Ambition limited to the
rise of a family!

"Can our sympathies still hallow that? No! In Guy Darrell
successful--that ambition was treason to earth! Mankind was his family
now! THEREFORE Heaven thwarted the object which opposed its own ends
in creating you! THERFORE childless you stand on your desolate hearth!
THEREFORE, lo! side by side--yon uncompleted pile--your own uncompleted
life!"

Darrell sat dumb.--He was appalled!

GEORGE MORLEY.--"Has not that object stinted your very intellect? Has it
not, while baffled in its own centred aim--has it not robbed you of the
glory which youth craved, and which manhood might have won? Idolater
to the creed of an Ancestor's NAME, has your own name that hold on the
grateful respect of the Future, which men ever give to that genius whose
objects are knit with mankind? Suddenly, in the zenith of life, amidst
cheers, not of genuine renown,--cheers loud and brief as a mob's
hurrah--calamities, all of which I know not, nor conjecture, interrupt
your career;--and when your o