CHAPTER XI.

Des quatre saisons de la vie humaine, - enfance, jeunesse, age mûr, vieillesse, - L'ENFANCE Consiste en pleurs,—LA JEUNESSE, en contrariétés d'amour,-L'AGE MUR, en ambitions et labeurs, —LA VIEILLESSE en infirmités et regrets :souffrance quadruple! GAY. L'EMBRYON.

Oh! age has weary days

And nichts o' sleepless pain.

Thou golden time o' youthful prime,

Why com'st thou not again?

A MIND at war with itself is apt to find in society only aggravations of its strife. But situated as Jervis was at that moment, in contact with the grandest features and attributes of nature, it was impossible for his personal tribulations to retain the ascendancy. Thus face to face with nature, contending

with her for mastery of her secrets, his spirit was at once humbled and elevated, — like Jacob, wrestling with GOD.

After a week's sojourn at Portici,—after a contemplation by day, by night, and in the stillness of the morning and evening twilight, of the inflamed mountain,-after listening to its terrible voice in the night season, and watching from a boat in the bay its frightful emissions, after hazarding with a chosen company of the professors of Naples, the terrible fate of Pliny,-and still more, after venturing the same awful contingencies alone, he returned to his old habitation, for the purpose of pursuing with his coadjutors a course of experiments on the observations they had made and the products they had obtained.

His mind was comparatively tranquil. The littleness of the things of this world had obtained an awful exemplification in the terrors of an implement of divine vengeance, by which, at the appointed time, cities had been

destroyed, and nations swept away.

An em

peror, a pope, a Mrs Hecksworth, had become mere atoms of dust in the estimation of the awe-stricken philosopher.

"Thank heaven, you are come at last,and thank heaven you have been where it became you to be!" cried Philip Fairfax, shaking him heartily by the hand, the morning after his arrival in his old quarters.—“I have been here every day, for the last four; fancying that as soon as Vesuvius had roared itself quiet again, we should hear news of you.

"I arrived last night," said Cleve, as soon as his friend would allow him scope for utterance.

"And as I live, not a hair of your head singed!-I expected to see you looking like the ghost of Empedocles; or, at least, a sergeant of Braidwood's fire brigade. Instead of which, you are only a little paler and thinner!"

"I have been working hard," replied Cleve, with one of the melancholy smiles that imparted so great a charm to his countenance. -"But I am the better for it:

The labour we delight in, physics pain."

"You can't work too hard!"- rejoined his uncompromising companion,-"'tis your vocation, Hal!-But what pain, I should like to know, have you to physic?--Young, healthy, successful in all your undertakings, I hold you an especial favourite of fortune! For you, the labour you delight in is required rather as a sedative, lest you grow too much inflated by the prosperities and joys of the world. Above all, my dear fellow, you are your own master!"

"You say it with so long a face and so heavy a sigh," rejoined Cleve, "that I could almost fancy you had found reason, since we parted, to repine after independence?"

"And so I have!"

"Some misunderstanding with Lord John?"

"On the contrary! I wish he would

quarrel with me, that I might have some pretext for dealing with him more harshly than I fear he will ever afford occasion for. The fact is, I love him like a brother,—nay, in spite of our approximation of age,-like a son; and have not courage to treat him with the wholesome severity he requires."

"I sometimes think you insist too largely on the value of wholesome severity," said Cleve, with a second smile.-" To me, whom you also profess to regard as a brother, you prove your love only by excess of chastening. And I suspect that Lord John, like myself, is more likely to be amenable to gentler entreatment."

My entreatment of him is gentle enough!" cried Fairfax, whose abruptness of movement and manner showed him to be more out of sorts than Cleve had ever seen him in the

course of their acquaintance. — “But I am