eciation. Sweet are the uses
of a boy's vanity, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.

The dreamer in his mountain eyrie felt his heart warm with a sort of
fatherly pity over these bumpkin raptures. The lad blows a bubble of
foolery, and it glitters and floats and bursts, and who is the worse
for it? The man carves folly in brass, and breaks his head on his own
monument; or forges it in steel, and stabs his own heart with it. The
vanities of youth are yeast in wholesome ale. The follies of later life
are mildew in the cask. The lad who never tasted Paul's intoxication may
make a worthy citizen, but he will never set the Thames afire.

Paul went on writing, and thundered from the editorial pulpit weekly. He
gave the _Crusher_ a policy. Castle Barfield was to be a borough at the
next redistribution of seats. Its watchwords were 'Peace, Retrenchment,
and Reform.' It was to uphold the traditions of Manchester in a curious
blend with the philosophy, or the want of it, of Thomas Carlyle. It
assailed the Vicar of All Saints' for the introduction of a surpliced
choir, and it showed a bared arm and a clenched fist to Popery.

The Jovian wielder of the _Crusher's_ lightnings got used to being
discussed at the Saturday morning table, and encountered praise and
blame there with an equal countenance. In his own unplummeted depths he
was Scott before the discovery of the authorship of the Waverley series;
he was Junius; he was S. G. O. And not a soul ever guessed at the truth,
for just as Paul had resolved to reveal his identity and claim his fame
the _Crusher_ died.

Then for a long time he was voiceless, and, having no paper balloon
to float him, he went about in his own thoughts, quite like a common
person. A year later, routing out the whole series of printed articles
from one of his jackdaw hiding-places, he was inspired by an intense
disdain, and burned them in the office stove.

All the time the world he lived in was the world he took least heed
of. Until Ralston crossed him--Ralston, his man of men, and king, and
deity--the only real creature was the gray old man who had begotten
him. Father and son had grown to a curious sympathy, in which age never
domineered because of age, or youth presumed because of youth. Armstrong
the elder was a poet, though he had never printed a line; and he and
Paul brought their verses to each other. They used to print at times the
productions of the local bard, and their first bond of genial