BOOK IX.

CHAPTER I.

"Saus. I too have oracles

That claim a hearing."

MITCHELLS'S ARISTOPHANES.-The Knights.

1 WONDER Whether the world will perceive all the sublime and beautiful things there are in this work! My sweet Alice-I may speak of you without the vanity of authorship; for Nature moulded you, and I did but copy-will they discover how exquisite were the materials of innocence, that sin itself could not mar, from which you were created? You, Alice,

you

-whom it would have been impossible even for poets to create from the teeming fancy-the literal and simple transcript from the real! Two years ago, yea, even two little years, I should have spoiled the canvass that coldly reflects your image. I should have let my enthusiasm run away with me, and have overcoloured your modest and delicate hues; but patiencethe sequel of your fortunes is yet to come. And my banker, my excellent, worthy, respectable banker, the dolts would have liked you better if I had daubed you in coarser colours, and made you a Glossop or a Richard the Third; and Lumley Ferrers-with your manners of wax and your heart of stone-sharp and bitter is the experience a man must have attained ere he could have selected you from the herd; and Florence, the proud and peerless, and Ernest Maltravers himself, with his progressive changes and varying hues-oh, how much finer a writer they would have thought me, if, instead of these new combinations of human life, I had chalked out a villain, and a worthy, and a dwarf, and a caricature humourist of one phrase! Will they fancy, Ernest Maltravers, that you were meant for me, because you are an author and a politician ?-the suspicion would flatter me-but there is not even a family

resemblance. Alas! I wish I could draw myself! What author ever could mimic his own features? We are too various and too complex to have a likeness in 'any one of our creation.

No! Ernest Maltravers, you are an original, not a copy; you will not interest young ladies and gentlemen half as much as if you had been a bold impostor, with a sneer and a swagger. What do we care, Ernest? we must bide our time; and yet, if the judgments of to-day are hollow, those of to-morrow we may never hear! Alas! how is the bloom faded from the face of life! how is the golden bowl broken at the cistern! Ah! fair days of youth, when I had no name-when there was no such thing as experience-would I could recall you; perhaps in age your shadow may come back to me, though the light be lost; for when we have seen and tried all things, we return to the same conclusions as those from which we started, and in the glass of memory we look once more on the form of hope! I long for the hour when I shall break up my wand and drown my books; the island I have dwelt in is a desert. I am growing egotistical. "What has this to do with your story?" cries some solemn Mr. Bayes. "Sir, I beg your pardon; but everything relating to the author illustrates the work. None of us are half egotistical enough! You are puzzled-let us go on."

It was a fine afternoon in December, when Lumley Ferrers turned from Lord Saxingham's door. The knockers were muffled-the windows on the third story were partially closed. There was sickness in that house.