gone, and
then you will be able to decide from reflection, without being biassed
against your own judgment, by his workings upon feelings which, to the
honour of women, when the heart is concerned, spurn at the cold
reasonings of prudence and worldly wisdom."

The advice of the man of the world prevailed over that of the man of
God; and Rainscourt, after waiting in town, with impatience, for the
answer, received a decided but kind refusal. He tore the letter into
fragments, with indignation, and set off for Cheltenham, more violently
in love with his wife than he was before her rejection of him.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

Great Negative! how vainly would the wise
Inquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise,
Didst thou not stand to point their dull philosophies.
ROCHESTER'S ODE TO NOTHING.

Should you feel half as tired with reading as I am with writing, I
forgive you, with all my heart, if you throw down the book, and read no
more. I have written too fast--I have quite _sprained_ my imagination--
for you must know that this is all _fiction_, every word of it. Yet I
do not doubt but there are many who will find out who the characters are
meant for, notwithstanding my assertion to the contrary. Well, be it
so. It's a very awkward position to have to write a chapter of sixteen
pages, without materials for more than two; at least, I find it so.
Some people have the power of spinning out a trifle of matter, covering
a large surface with a grain of ore--like the goldbeater, who, out of a
single guinea, will compose a score of books. I wish I could.

Is there nothing to give me an idea? I've racked my sensorium
internally to no purpose. Let me look round the cabin for some external
object to act as a fillip to an exhausted imagination. A little thing
will do.--Well, here's an _ant_. That's quite enough. _Commencons_.

"Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits," they say; but much as
travel by land may enlarge the mind, it never can be expanded to the
utmost of its capabilities, until it has also peregrinated by water. I
believe that not only the human intellect, but the instinct of brutes,
is enlarged by going to sea.

The ant which attracted my attention is one of a nest in my cabin, whose
labours I often superintend: and I defy any ant, in any part of the four
continents, or wherever land may be, to show an equal knowledge of
mechanical power. I do not mean to assert that there is originally a