CHAPTER XXI.

"As our life is very short, so it is very miserable. "How few men in the world are prosperous! What an infinite number of slaves and beggars, of persecuted and oppressed people, fill all corners of the earth with groans, and heaven itself with weeping prayers and sad remembrances !

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"Our days are full of sorrow and anguish, dishonoured and made unhappy with many sins, amazed with fears, full of cares, divided with curiosities and contradictory interests, made airy and impertinent with varieties, abused with ignorance and prodigious errors, made ridiculous with a thousand weaknesses, worn away with labours, laden with diseases, daily vexed with dangers and temptations, and in love with misery."

JEREMY TAYLOR.

JUSTICE has never been done to the merits of a wet day in summer -one of those days of wind and rain which fills the air with fragrance, for every full-blown flower has its sweet life fairly crushed out; when there is a good excuse for a fire—a fire being one of those luxuries for which, in England, we always expect a

reason; when it is cold enough to make warmth pleasant, yet without freezing one side while the other is burning. It was just such a day as this when Lorraine went to take a farewell dinner with Mr. Morland. Alternate showers of rain-drops or rose-leaves had been blown in gusts against the windows all the morning; but now the curtains were drawn, a warm red blaze came from the bright fire, and a softer and clearer light from the lamp, whose pure pale transparency is so prettily and fancifully compared, by an American writer,* to a gigantic pearl illuminated. A mahogany table, like a dark mirror, was drawn close to the fire-Mr. Morland had an old-fashioned predilection for its polished surface; on it stood three or four rich cut-glass decanters, "breathing of the sweet South," and a dark slender bottle, common enough in shape, but round which lingered the fragrance of burgundy. Two large arm-chairs were drawn on each side the fireplace, in which sat Mr. Morland and his guest. Mr. Morland. "After all, I do not so much regret the delay this occasions in your entrance into public life-you are still too young.

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Edward Lorraine.-"Are you not now speaking rather after the fashion of common prejudice? I am young, it is true; but I have outlived the pleasures of youth. I”

Mr. Morland." But not its feelings. You are still credulous of good-still enthusiastic of impossibilities; you believe that the world may be set right—nay, that you are one of those predestined to assist in so doing."

Edward Lorraine." I will not deny that I do think there is great room for improvement, and that very likely I am deceived in my own self-estimate a common mistake, even with the most experienced; still, I am not prepared to admit, that a cause can be injured by the devotion and industry given to it by even the humblest individual.”

Mr. Morland." I was thinking more of yourself. Have you not felt Mr. Delawarr's conduct very severely?"

Edward Lorraine." I have: I put my own personal interests quite out of the question; but I cannot forgive a man that I so respected and admired, for being the one to shew me that my respect and my admiration were given to an acted part-not the real character."

arguments. Truly, you seem well prepared for the disappointment, the falsehood, which will meet you at every turn of your future career. Mr. Delawarr has taken a step imperative to his own interests, and for which most convincing reasons may be assigned. I never knew any debatable point not maintained on both sides by unanswerable arguments; and yet you are angry that he has not thrown every advantage aside to enact your beau-idéal of patriotic excellence."

Edward Lorraine." At this rate, then, your own interests only are to describe your circle of action?"

Mr. Morland.-"Not exactly; they must be a little rounded at the extremities, where they come in contact with those of others."

Edward Lorraine." Then you would have had me act in direct opposition to all I have been accustomed to regard as good and admirable, and accepted Mr. Delawarr's offers ?"

Mr. Morland."Not exactly; the young man who acts in early life contrary to his feelings, will, in after-years, act contrary to his principles of right. I only wish you to draw from it a moral of instability—to see the necessity, if you mean to carry your theories into

action, of arming yourself with the indifference of experience.'

Edward Lorraine." We should, then, never act, if we were so indifferent to the result."

Mr. Morland.-" And all the better for yourself if you never enter the gladiatorial arena of public life you will sacrifice time, health, and talents; you will be paragraphed-probably pelted; you will die of an inflammation, or a consumption; and leave it a debatable point to historians, what was the extent of the injury you did your country."

Edward Lorraine.-" Nothing is so fortunate for mankind as its diversity of opinion if we all thought alike-with you, for examplethere would at once be an end to all mutual assistance and improvement."

Mr. Morland.-" Do not be alarmed; there are plenty of restless spirits who will always be happy to take upon them all the affairs of the world. Atlas was only an ingenious allegory."

Edward Lorraine." This infinite variety in men's minds-the innate superiority of some, the equally innate inferiority of others—has always seemed to me the great argument against the system of universal equality. There is no natural Agrarian law. Distinctions, from that