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+The Project Gutenberg EBook My Novel, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Vol. 4
+#132 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: My Novel, Volume 4.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7705]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 29, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY NOVEL, BY LYTTON, V4 ***
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FOURTH.
+
+
+INITIAL CHAPTER.
+
+COMPRISING MR. CAXTON'S OPINIONS ON THE MATRIMONIAL STATE, SUPPORTED BY
+LEARNED AUTHORITIES.
+
+"It was no bad idea of yours, Pisistratus," said my father, graciously,
+"to depict the heightened affections and the serious intention of Signor
+Riccabocca by a single stroke,-- /He left of his spectacles!/  Good."
+
+"Yet," quoth my uncle, "I think Shakspeare represents a lover as falling
+into slovenly habits, neglecting his person, and suffering his hose to be
+ungartered, rather than paying that attention to his outer man which
+induces Signor Riccabocca to leave off his spectacles, and look as
+handsome as nature will permit him."
+
+"There are different degrees and many phases of the passion," replied my
+father.  "Shakspeare is speaking of an ill-treated, pining, woe-begone
+lover, much aggrieved by the cruelty of his mistress,--a lover who has
+found it of no avail to smarten himself up, and has fallen despondently
+into the opposite extreme.  Whereas Signor Riccabocca has nothing to
+complain of in the barbarity of Miss Jemima."
+
+"Indeed he has not!" cried Blanche, tossing her head,--"forward
+creature!"
+
+"Yes, my dear," said my mother, trying her best to look stately, "I am
+decidedly of opinion that, in that respect, Pisistratus has lowered the
+dignity of the sex.  Not intentionally," added my mother, mildly, and
+afraid she had said something too bitter; "but it is very hard for a man
+to describe us women."
+
+The captain nodded approvingly; Mr. Squills smiled; my father quietly
+resumed the thread of his discourse.
+
+"To continue," quoth he.  "Riccabocca has no reason to despair of success
+in his suit, nor any object in moving his mistress to compassion.  He
+may, therefore, very properly tie up his garters and leave off his
+spectacles.  What do you say, Mr. Squills?--for, after all, since love-
+making cannot fail to be a great constitutional derangement, the
+experience of a medical man must be the best to consult."
+
+"Mr. Caxton," replied Squills, obviously flattered, "you are quite right:
+when a man makes love, the organs of self-esteem and desire of applause
+are greatly stimulated, and therefore, of course, he sets himself off to
+the best advantage.  It is only, as you observe, when, like Shakspeare's
+lover, he has given up making love as a bad job, and has received that
+severe hit on the ganglions which the cruelty of a mistress inflicts,
+that he neglects his personal appearance: he neglects it, not because he
+is in love, but because his nervous system is depressed.  That was the
+cause, if you remember, with poor Major Prim.  He wore his wig all awry
+when Susan Smart jilted him; but I set it right for him."
+
+"By shaming Miss Smart into repentance, or getting him a new sweetheart?"
+asked my uncle.
+
+"Pooh!" answered Squills, "by quinine and cold bathing."
+
+"We may therefore grant," renewed my father, "that, as a general rule,
+the process of courtship tends to the spruceness, and even foppery, of
+the individual engaged in the experiment, as Voltaire has very prettily
+proved somewhere.  Nay, the Mexicans, indeed, were of opinion that the
+lady at least ought to continue those cares of her person even after
+marriage.  There is extant, in Sahagun's 'History of New Spain,' the
+advice of an Aztec or Mexican mother to her daughter, in which she says,
+'That your husband may not take you in dislike, adorn yourself, wash
+yourself, and let your garments be clean.'  It is true that the good lady
+adds, 'Do it in moderation; since if every day you are washing yourself
+and your clothes, the world will say that you are over-delicate; and
+particular people will call you--TAPETZON TINEMAXOCH!'  What those words
+precisely mean," added my father, modestly, "I cannot say, since I never
+had the opportunity to acquire the ancient Aztec language,--but something
+very opprobrious and horrible, no doubt."
+
+"I dare say a philosopher like Signor Riccabocca," said my uncle, "was
+not himself very /tapetzon tine/--what d' ye call it?--and a good healthy
+English wife, that poor affectionate Jemima, was thrown away upon him."
+
+"Roland," said my father, "you don't like foreigners; a respectable
+prejudice, and quite natural in a man who has been trying his best to
+hew them in pieces and blow them up into splinters.  But you don't like
+philosophers either,--and for that dislike you have no equally good
+reason."
+
+"I only implied that they are not much addicted to soap and water," said
+my uncle.
+
+"A notable mistake.  Many great philosophers have been very great beaux.
+Aristotle was a notorious fop.  Buffon put on his best laced ruffles when
+he sat down to write, which implies that he washed his hands first.
+Pythagoras insists greatly on the holiness of frequent ablutions; and
+Horace--who, in his own way, was as good a philosopher as any the Romans
+produced--takes care to let us know what a neat, well-dressed, dapper
+little gentleman he was.  But I don't think you ever read the 'Apology'
+of Apuleius?"
+
+"Not I; what is it about?" asked the captain.
+
+"About a great many things.  It is that Sage's vindication from several
+malignant charges,--amongst others, and principally indeed, that of being
+much too refined and effeminate for a philosopher.  Nothing can exceed
+the rhetorical skill with which he excuses himself for using--tooth-
+powder.  'Ought a philosopher,' he exclaims, 'to allow anything unclean
+about him, especially in the mouth,--the mouth, which is the vestibule of
+the soul, the gate of discourse, the portico of thought!  Ah, but
+AEmilianus [the accuser of Apuleius] never opens his mouth but for
+slander and calumny,--tooth-powder would indeed be unbecoming to him!
+Or, if he use any, it will not be my good Arabian tooth powder, but
+charcoal and cinders.  Ay, his teeth should be as foul as his language!
+And yet even the crocodile likes to have his teeth cleaned; insects get
+into them, and, horrible reptile though he be, he opens his jaws
+inoffensively to a faithful dentistical bird, who volunteers his beak for
+a toothpick.'"
+
+My father was now warm in the subject he had started, and soared miles
+away from Riccabocca and "My Novel."  "And observe," he exclaimed,--
+"observe with what gravity this eminent Platonist pleads guilty to the
+charge of having a mirror.  'Why, what,' he exclaims, 'more worthy of the
+regards of a human creature than his own image' /nihil respectabilius
+homini quam formam suam/!  Is not that one of our children the most dear
+to us who is called 'the picture of his father'?  But take what pains you
+will with a picture, it can never be so like you as the face in your
+mirror!  Think it discreditable to look with proper attention on one's
+self in the glass!  Did not Socrates recommend such attention to his
+disciples,--did he not make a great moral agent of the speculum?  The
+handsome, in admiring their beauty therein, were admonished that handsome
+is who handsome does; and the more the ugly stared at themselves, the
+more they became naturally anxious to hide the disgrace of their features
+in the loveliness of their merits.  Was not Demosthenes always at his
+speculum?  Did he not rehearse his causes before it as before a master in
+the art?  He learned his eloquence from Plato, his dialectics from
+Eubulides; but as for his delivery--there, he came to the mirror!
+
+"Therefore," concluded Mr. Caxton, returning unexpectedly to the
+subject,--"therefore, it is no reason to suppose that Dr. Riccabocca
+is averse to cleanliness and decent care of the person because he is a
+philosopher; and, all things considered, he never showed himself more a
+philosopher than when he left off his spectacles and looked his best."
+
+"Well," said my mother, kindly, "I only hope it may turn out happily.
+But I should have been better pleased if Pisistratus had not made Dr.
+Riccabocca so reluctant a wooer."
+
+"Very true," said the captain; "the Italian does not shine as a lover.
+Throw a little more fire into him, Pisistratus,--something gallant and
+chivalrous."
+
+"Fire!  gallantry!  chivalry!" cried my father, who had taken Riccabocca
+under his special protection; "why, don't you see that the man is
+described as a philosopher?--and I should like to know when a philosopher
+ever plunged into matrimony without considerable misgivings and cold
+shivers!  Indeed, it seems that--perhaps before he was a philosopher--
+Riccabocca had tried the experiment, and knew what it was.  Why, even
+that plain-speaking, sensible, practical man, Metellus Numidicus, who was
+not even a philosopher, but only a Roman censor, thus expressed himself
+in an exhortation to the people to perpetrate matrimony: 'If, O Quirites,
+we could do without wives, we should all dispense with that subject of
+care /ea molestia careremus/; but since nature has so managed it that we
+cannot live with women comfortably, nor without them at all, let us
+rather provide for the human race than our own temporary felicity.'"
+
+Here the ladies set up such a cry of indignation, that both Roland and
+myself endeavoured to appease their wrath by hasty assurances that we
+utterly repudiated the damnable doctrine of Metellus Numidicus.
+
+My father, wholly unmoved, as soon as a sullen silence was established,
+recommenced.  "Do not think, ladies," said he, "that you were without
+advocates at that day: there were many Romans gallant enough to blame the
+censor for a mode of expressing himself which they held to be equally
+impolite and injudicious.  'Surely,' said they, with some plausibility,
+if Numidicus wished men to marry, he need not have referred so
+peremptorily to the disquietudes of the connection, and thus have made
+them more inclined to turn away from matrimony than give them a relish
+for it.'  But against these critics one honest man (whose name of Titus
+Castricius should not be forgotten by posterity) maintained that Metellus
+Numidicus could not have spoken more properly; 'For remark,' said he,
+'that Metellus was a censor, not a rhetorician.  It becomes rhetoricians
+to adorn and disguise and make the best of things; but Metellus, /sanctus
+vir/,--a holy and blameless man, grave and sincere to wit, and addressing
+the Roman people in the solemn capacity of Censor,--was bound to speak
+the plain truth, especially as he was treating of a subject on which the
+observation of every day, and the experience of every life, could not
+leave the least doubt upon the mind of his audience.'  Still, Riccabocca,
+having decided to marry, has no doubt prepared himself to bear all the
+concomitant evils--as becomes a professed sage; and I own I admire the
+art with which Pisistratus has drawn the kind of woman most likely to
+suit a philosopher--"
+
+Pisistratus bows, and looks round complacently; but recoils from two very
+peevish and discontented faces feminine.
+
+MR. CAXTON (completing his sentence).--"Not only as regards mildness of
+temper and other household qualifications, but as regards the very person
+of the object of his choice.  For you evidently remember, Pisistratus,
+the reply of Bias, when asked his opinion on marriage: [Long sentence in
+Greek]"
+
+Pisistratus tries to look as if he had the opinion of Bias by heart, and
+nods acquiescingly.
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"That is, my dears, 'The woman you would marry is either
+handsome or ugly: if handsome, she is koine,--namely, you don't have her
+to yourself; if ugly, she is /poine/,--that is, a fury.'  But, as it is
+observed in Aulus Gellius (whence I borrow this citation), there is a
+wide interval between handsome and ugly.  And thus Ennius, in his tragedy
+of 'Menalippus,' uses an admirable expression to designate women of the
+proper degree of matrimonial comeliness, such as a philosopher would
+select.  He calls this degree /stata forma/,--a rational, mediocre sort
+of beauty, which is not liable to be either /koine/ or /poine/.  And
+Favorinus, who was a remarkably sensible man, and came from Provence--the
+male inhabitants of which district have always valued themselves on their
+knowledge of love and ladies--calls this said /stata forma/ the beauty of
+wives,--the uxorial beauty.  Ennius says that women of a /stata forma/
+are almost always safe and modest.  Now, Jemima, you observe, is
+described as possessing this /stata forma/; and it is the nicety of your
+observation in this respect, which I like the most in the whole of your
+description of a philosopher's matrimonial courtship, Pisistratus
+(excepting only the stroke of the spectacles), for it shows that you had
+properly considered the opinion of Bias, and mastered all the counter
+logic suggested in Book v., chapter xi., of Aulus Gellius."
+
+"For all that," said Blanche, half archly, half demurely, with a smile in
+the eye and a pout of the lip, "I don't remember that Pisistratus, in the
+days when he wished to be most complimentary, ever assured me that I had
+a /stata forma/,--a rational, mediocre sort of beauty."
+
+"And I think," observed my uncle, "that when he comes to his real
+heroine, whoever she may be, he will not trouble his head much about
+either Bias or Aulus Gellius."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Matrimony is certainly a great change in life.  One is astonished not to
+find a notable alteration in one's friend, even if he or she have been
+only wedded a week.  In the instance of Dr. and Mrs. Riccabocca the
+change was peculiarly visible.  To speak first of the lady, as in
+chivalry bound, Mrs. Riccabocca had entirely renounced that melancholy
+which had characterized Miss Jemima; she became even sprightly and gay,
+and looked all the better and prettier for the alteration.  She did not
+scruple to confess honestly to Mrs. Dale that she was now of opinion that
+the world was very far from approaching its end.  But, in the meanwhile,
+she did not neglect the duty which the belief she had abandoned serves to
+inculcate,--"She set her house in order."  The cold and penurious
+elegance that had characterized the Casino disappeared like enchantment,
+--that is, the elegance remained, but the cold and penury fled before the
+smile of woman.  Like Puss-in-Boots, after the nuptials of his master,
+Jackeymo only now caught minnows and sticklebacks for his own amusement.
+Jackeymo looked much plumper, and so did Riccabocca.  In a word, the fair
+Jemima became an excellent wife.  Riccabocca secretly thought her
+extravagant, but, like a wise man, declined to look at the house bills,
+and ate his joint in unreproachful silence.
+
+Indeed there was so much unaffected kindness in the nature of Mrs.
+Riccabocca--beneath the quiet of her manner there beat so genially the
+heart of the Hazeldeans--that she fairly justified the favourable
+anticipations of Mrs. Dale.  And though the doctor did not noisily boast
+of his felicity, nor, as some new married folks do, thrust it insultingly
+under the /nimis unctis naribus/,--the turned-up noses of your surly old
+married folks,--nor force it gaudily and glaringly on the envious eyes of
+the single, you might still see that he was a more cheerful and light-
+hearted man than before.  His smile was less ironical, his politeness
+less distant.  He did not study Machiavelli so intensely,--and he did not
+return to the spectacles; which last was an excellent sign.  Moreover,
+the humanizing influence of the tidy English wife might be seen in the
+improvement of his outward or artificial man.  His clothes seemed to fit
+him better; indeed, the clothes were new.  Mrs. Dale no longer remarked
+that the buttons were off the wristbands, which was a great satisfaction
+to her.  But the sage still remained faithful to the pipe, the cloak, and
+the red silk umbrella.  Mrs. Riccabocca had (to her credit be it spoken)
+used all becoming and wife-like arts against these three remnants of the
+old bachelor, Adam, but in vain.  "/Anima mia/," [Soul of mine]--said the
+doctor, tenderly, "I hold the cloak, the umbrella, and the pipe as the
+sole relics that remain to me of my native country.  Respect and spare
+them."
+
+Mrs. Riccabocca was touched, and had the good sense to perceive that man,
+let him be ever so much married, retains certain signs of his ancient
+independence,--certain tokens of his old identity, which a wife, the most
+despotic, will do well to concede.  She conceded the cloak, she submitted
+to the umbrella, she overcame her abhorrence of the pipe.  After all,
+considering the natural villany of our sex, she confessed to herself that
+she might have been worse off.  But through all the calm and cheerfulness
+of Riccabocca, a nervous perturbation was sufficiently perceptible; it
+commenced after the second week of marriage; it went on increasing, till
+one bright sunny afternoon, as he was standing on his terrace, gazing
+down upon the road, at which Jackeymo was placed, lo, a stage-coach
+stopped!  The doctor made a bound, and put both hands to his heart as if
+he had been shot; he then leaped over the balustrade, and his wife from
+her window beheld him flying down the hill, with his long hair streaming
+in the wind, till the trees hid him from her sight.
+
+"Ah," thought she, with a natural pang of conjugal jealousy, "henceforth
+I am only second in his home.  He has gone to welcome his child!"  And at
+that reflection Mrs. Riccabocca shed tears.
+
+But so naturally amiable was she, that she hastened to curb her emotion,
+and efface as well as she could the trace of a stepmother's grief.  When
+this was done, and a silent, self-rebuking prayer murmured over, the good
+woman descended the stairs with alacrity, and summoning up her best
+smiles, emerged on the terrace.
+
+She was repaid; for scarcely had she come into the open air, when two
+little arms were thrown around her, and the sweetest voice that ever came
+from a child's lips sighed out in broken English, "Good mamma, love me a
+little."
+
+"Love you? with my whole heart!" cried the stepmother, with all a
+mother's honest passion.  And she clasped the child to her breast.
+
+"God bless you, my wife!" said Riccabocca, in a husky tone.
+
+"Please take this too," added Jackeymo, in Italian, as well as his sobs
+would let him, and he broke off a great bough full of blossoms from his
+favourite orange-tree, and thrust it into his mistress's hand.  She had
+not the slightest notion what he meant by it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Violante was indeed a bewitching child,--a child to whom I defy Mrs.
+Caudle herself (immortal Mrs. Caudle!) to have been a harsh stepmother.
+
+Look at her now, as released from those kindly arms, she stands, still
+clinging with one hand to her new mamma, and holding out the other to
+Riccabocca, with those large dark eyes swimming in happy tears.  What a
+lovely smile! what an ingenuous, candid brow!  She looks delicate, she
+evidently requires care, she wants the mother.  And rare is the woman who
+would not love her the better for that!  Still, what an innocent,
+infantine bloom in those clear, smooth cheeks! and in that slight frame,
+what exquisite natural grace!
+
+"And this, I suppose, is your nurse, darling?" said Mrs. Riccabocca,
+observing a dark, foreign-looking woman, dressed very strangely, without
+cap or bonnet, but a great silver arrow stuck in her hair, and a filigree
+chain or necklace resting upon her kerchief.
+
+"Ah, good Annetta," said Violante, in Italian.  "Papa, she says she is to
+go back; but she is not to go back, is she?"
+
+Riccabocca, who had scarcely before noticed the woman, started at that
+question, exchanged a rapid glance with Jackeymo, and then, muttering
+some inaudible excuse, approached the nurse, and, beckoning her to follow
+him, went away into the grounds.  He did not return for more than an
+hour, nor did the woman then accompany him home.  He said briefly to his
+wife that the nurse was obliged to return at once to Italy, and that she
+would stay in the village to catch the mail; that indeed she would be of
+no use in their establishment, as she could not speak a word of English;
+that he was sadly afraid Violante would pine for her.  And Violante did
+pine at first.  But still, to a child it is so great a thing to find a
+parent, to be at home, that, tender and grateful as Violante was, she
+could not be inconsolable while her father was there to comfort.
+
+For the first few days, Riccabocca scarcely permitted any one to be with
+his daughter but himself.  He would not even leave her alone with his
+Jemima.  They walked out together,--sat together for hours in the
+belvidere.  Then by degrees he began to resign her more and more to
+Jemima's care and tuition, especially in English, of which language at
+present she spoke only a few sentences (previously, perhaps, learned by
+heart) so as to be clearly intelligible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+There was one person in the establishment of Dr. Riccabocca who was
+satisfied neither with the marriage of his master nor the arrival of
+Violante,--and that was our friend Lenny Fairfield.  Previous to the all-
+absorbing duties of courtship, the young peasant had secured a very large
+share of Riccabocca's attention.  The sage had felt interest in the
+growth of this rude intelligence struggling up to light.  But what with
+the wooing and what with the wedding, Lenny Fairfield had sunk very much
+out of his artificial position as pupil into his natural station of
+under-gardener.  And on the arrival of Violante, he saw, with natural
+bitterness, that he was clean forgotten, not only by Riccabocca, but
+almost by Jackeymo.  It was true that the master still lent him books,
+and the servant still gave him lectures on horticulture.  But Riccabocca
+had no time nor inclination now to amuse himself with enlightening that
+tumult of conjecture which the books created.  And if Jackeymo had been
+covetous of those mines of gold buried beneath the acres now fairly taken
+from the squire (and good-naturedly added rent-free, as an aid to
+Jemima's dower), before the advent of the young lady whose future dowry
+the produce was to swell, now that she was actually under the eyes of the
+faithful servant, such a stimulus was given to his industry that he could
+think of nothing else but the land, and the revolution he designed to
+effect in its natural English crops.  The garden, save only the
+orangetrees, was abandoned entirely to Lenny, and additional labourers
+were called in for the field work.  Jackeymo had discovered that one part
+of the soil was suited to lavender, that another would grow camomile.  He
+had in his heart apportioned a beautiful field of rich loam to flax; but
+against the growth of flax the squire set his face obstinately.  That
+most lucrative, perhaps, of all crops when soil and skill suit, was
+formerly attempted in England much more commonly than it is now, since
+you will find few old leases do not contain a clause prohibitory of flax
+as an impoverishment of the land.  And though Jackeymo learnedly
+endeavoured to prove to the squire that the flax itself contained
+particles which, if returned to the soil, repaid all that the crop took
+away, Mr. Hazeldean had his old-fashioned prejudices on the matter, which
+were insuperable.  "My forefathers," quoth he, "did not put that clause
+in their leases without good cause; and as the Casino lands are entailed
+on Frank, I have no right to gratify your foreign whims at his expense."
+
+To make up for the loss of the flax, Jackeymo resolved to convert a very
+nice bit of pasture into orchard ground, which he calculated would bring
+in L10 net per acre by the time Miss Violante was marriageable.  At this
+the squire pished a little; but as it was quite clear that the land would
+be all the more valuable hereafter for the fruit-trees, he consented to
+permit the "grass-land" to be thus partially broken up.
+
+All these changes left poor Lenny Fairfield very much to himself,--at a
+time when the new and strange devices which the initiation into book
+knowledge creates made it most desirable that he should have the constant
+guidance of a superior mind.
+
+One evening after his work, as Lenny was returning to his mother's
+cottage, very sullen and very moody, he suddenly came in contact with
+Sprott the tinker.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The tinker was seated under a hedge, hammering away at an old kettle,
+with a little fire burning in front of him, and the donkey hard by,
+indulging in a placid doze.  Mr. Sprott looked up as Lenny passed, nodded
+kindly, and said,--
+
+"Good evenin', Lenny: glad to hear you be so 'spectably sitivated with
+Mounseer."
+
+"Ay," answered Lenny, with a leaven of rancour in his recollections,
+"you're not ashamed to speak to me now that I am not in disgrace.  But it
+was in disgrace, when it wasn't my fault, that the real gentleman was
+most kind to me."
+
+"Ar-r, Lenny," said the tinker, with a prolonged rattle in that said
+Ar-r, which was not without great significance.  "But you sees the real
+gentleman, who han't got his bread to get, can hafford to 'spise his
+c'racter in the world.  A poor tinker must be timbersome and nice in his
+'sociations.  But sit down here a bit, Lenny; I've summat to say to ye!"
+
+"To me?"
+
+"To ye.  Give the neddy a shove out i' the vay, and sit down, I say."
+
+Lenny rather reluctantly, and somewhat superciliously, accepted this
+invitation.
+
+"I hears," said the tinker, in a voice made rather indistinct by a couple
+of nails, which he had inserted between his teeth,--"I hears as how you
+be unkimmon fond of reading.  I ha' sum nice cheap books in my bag
+yonder,--sum as low as a penny."
+
+"I should like to see them," said Lenny, his eyes sparkling.
+
+The tinker rose, opened one of the panniers on the ass's back, took out a
+bag, which he placed before Lenny, and told him to suit himself.  The
+young peasant desired no better.  He spread all the contents of the bag
+on the sward, and a motley collection of food for the mind was there,--
+food and poison, /serpentes avibus/ good and evil.  Here Milton's
+Paradise Lost, there "The Age of Reason;" here Methodist Tracts, there
+"True Principles of Socialism,"--Treatises on Useful Knowledge by sound
+learning actuated by pure benevolence, Appeals to Operatives by the
+shallowest reasoners, instigated by the same ambition that had moved
+Eratosthenes to the conflagration of a temple; works of fiction admirable
+as "Robinson Crusoe," or innocent as "The Old English Baron," beside
+coarse translations of such garbage as had rotted away the youth of
+France under Louis Quinze.  This miscellany was an epitome, in short, of
+the mixed World of Books, of that vast city of the Press, with its
+palaces and hovels, its aqueducts and sewers, which opens all alike to
+the naked eye and the curious mind of him to whom you say, in the
+tinker's careless phrase, "Suit yourself."
+
+But it is not the first impulse of a nature healthful and still pure to
+settle in the hovel and lose itself amidst the sewers; and Lenny
+Fairfield turned innocently over the bad books, and selecting two or
+three of the best, brought them to the tinker, and asked the price.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Sprott, putting on his spectacles, "you has taken the
+werry dearest: them 'ere be much cheaper, and more hinterestin'."
+
+"But I don't fancy them," answered Lenny; "I don't understand what they
+are about, and this seems to tell one how the steam-engine is made, and
+has nice plates; and this is 'Robinson Crusoe,' which Parson Dale once
+said he would give me--I'd rather buy it out of my own money."
+
+"Well, please yourself," quoth the tinker; "you shall have the books for
+four bob, and you can pay me next month."
+
+"Four bobs, four shillings?  it is a great sum," said Lenny; "but I will
+lay by, as you are kind enough to trust me: good-evening, Mr. Sprott."
+
+"Stay a bit," said the tinker; "I'll just throw you these two little
+tracts into the bargain; they be only a shilling a dozen, so 't is but
+tuppence,--and ven you has read those, vy, you'll be a regular customer."
+
+The tinker tossed to Lenny Nos. 1 and 2 of "Appeals to Operatives," and
+the peasant took them up gratefully.
+
+The young knowledge-seeker went his way across the green fields, and
+under the still autumn foliage of the hedgerows.  He looked first at one
+book, then at another; he did not know on which to settle.
+
+The tinker rose, and made a fire with leaves and furze and sticks, some
+dry and some green.
+
+Lenny has now opened No. 1 of the tracts: they are the shortest to read,
+and don't require so much effort of the mind as the explanation of the
+steam-engine.
+
+The tinker has set on his grimy glue-pot, and the glue simmers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+As Violante became more familiar with her new home, and those around her
+became more familiar with Violante, she was remarked for a certain
+stateliness of manner and bearing, which, had it been less evidently
+natural and inborn, would have seemed misplaced in the daughter of a
+forlorn exile, and would have been rare at so early an age among children
+of the loftiest pretensions.  It was with the air of a little princess
+that she presented her tiny hand to a friendly pressure, or submitted her
+calm clear cheek to a presuming kiss.  Yet withal she was so graceful,
+and her very stateliness was so pretty and captivating, that she was not
+the less loved for all her grand airs.  And, indeed, she deserved to be
+loved; for though she was certainly prouder than Mr. Dale could approve
+of, her pride was devoid of egotism,--and that is a pride by no means
+common.  She had an intuitive forethought for others: you could see that
+she was capable of that grand woman-heroism, abnegation of self; and
+though she was an original child, and often grave and musing, with a
+tinge of melancholy, sweet, but deep in her character, still she was not
+above the happy genial merriment of childhood,--only her silver laugh was
+more attuned, and her gestures more composed, than those of children
+habituated to many play-fellows usually are.  Mrs. Hazeldean liked her
+best when she was grave, and said "she would become a very sensible
+woman."  Mrs. Dale liked her best when she was gay, and said "she was
+born to make many a heart ache;" for which Mrs. Dale was properly
+reproved by the parson.  Mrs. Hazeldean gave her a little set of garden
+tools; Mrs. Dale a picture-book and a beautiful doll.  For a long time
+the book and the doll had the preference.  But Mrs. Hazeldean having
+observed to Riccabocca that the poor child looked pale, and ought to be a
+good deal in the open air, the wise father ingeniously pretended to
+Violante that Mrs. Riccabocca had taken a great fancy to the picture-
+book, and that he should be very glad to have the doll, upon which
+Violante hastened to give them both away, and was never so happy as when
+Mamma (as she called Mrs. Riccabocca) was admiring the picture-book, and
+Riccabocca with austere gravity dandled the doll.  Then Riccabocca
+assured her that she could be of great use to him in the garden; and
+Violante instantly put into movement her spade, hoe, and wheelbarrow.
+
+This last occupation brought her into immediate contact with Mr. Leonard
+Fairfield; and that personage one morning, to his great horror, found
+Miss Violante had nearly exterminated a whole celery-bed, which she had
+ignorantly conceived to be a crop of weeds.
+
+Lenny was extremely angry.  He snatched away the hoe, and said angrily,
+"You must not do that, Miss.  I'll tell your papa if you--"
+
+Violante drew herself up, and never having been so spoken to before, at
+least since her arrival in England, there was something comic in the
+surprise of her large eyes, as well as something tragic in the dignity of
+her offended mien.  "It is very naughty of you, Miss," continued Leonard,
+in a milder tone, for he was both softened by the eyes and awed by the
+mien, "and I trust you will not do it again."
+
+"Non capisco," murmured Violante, and the dark eyes filled with tears.
+At that moment up came Jackeymo: and Violante, pointing to Leonard, said,
+with an effort not to betray her emotion, "Il fanciullo e molto
+grossolano."--["He is a very rude boy."]
+
+Jackeymo turned to Leonard with the look of an enraged tiger.  "How you
+dare, scum of de earth that you are," cried he, "how you dare make cry
+the signorina?"  And his English not supplying familiar vituperatives
+sufficiently, he poured out upon Lenny such a profusion of Italian abuse,
+that the boy turned red and white, in a breath, with rage and perplexity.
+
+Violante took instant compassion upon the victim she had made, and with
+true feminine caprice now began to scold Jackeymo for his anger, and,
+finally approaching Leonard, laid her hand on his arm, and said with a
+kindness at once childlike and queenly, and in the prettiest imaginable
+mixture of imperfect English and soft Italian, to which I cannot pretend
+to do justice, and shall therefore translate: "Don't mind him.  I dare
+say it was all my fault, only I did not understand you: are not these
+things weeds?"
+
+"No, my darling signorina," said Jackeymo in Italian, looking ruefully at
+the celery-bed, "they are not weeds, and they sell very well at this time
+of the year.  But still, if it amuses you to pluck them up, I should like
+to see who's to prevent it."
+
+Lenny walked away.  He had been called "the scum of the earth,"--by a
+foreigner too!  He had again been ill-treated for doing what he conceived
+his duty.  He was again feeling the distinction between rich and poor,
+and he now fancied that that distinction involved deadly warfare, for he
+had read from beginning to end those two damnable tracts which the tinker
+had presented to him.  But in the midst of all the angry disturbance of
+his mind, he felt the soft touch of the infant's hand, the soothing
+influence of her conciliating words, and he was half ashamed that he had
+spoken so roughly to a child.
+
+Still, not trusting himself to speak, he walked away, and sat down at a
+distance: "I don't see," thought he, "why there should be rich and poor,
+master and servant."  Lenny, be it remembered, had not heard the Parson's
+Political Sermon.
+
+An hour after, having composed himself, Lenny returned to his work.
+Jackeymo was no longer in the garden: he had gone to the fields; but
+Riccabocca was standing by the celerybed, and holding the red silk
+umbrella over Violante as she sat on the ground, looking up at her father
+with those eyes already so full of intelligence and love and soul.
+
+"Lenny," said Riccabocca, "my young lady has been telling me that she has
+been very naughty, and Giacomo very unjust to you.  Forgive them both."
+
+Lenny's sullenness melted in an instant: the reminiscences of tracts Nos.
+1 and 2,--
+
+                   "Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
+                    Left not a wreck behind."
+
+He raised eyes swimming with all his native goodness towards the wise
+man, and dropped them gratefully on the infant peace-maker.  Then he
+turned away his head and fairly wept.  The parson was right: "O ye poor,
+have charity for the rich; O ye rich, respect the poor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Now from that day the humble Lenny and the regal Violante became great
+friends.  With what pride he taught her to distinguish between celery and
+weeds,--and how proud too was she when she learned that she was useful!
+There is not a greater pleasure you can give children, especially female
+children, than to make them feel they are already of value in the world,
+and serviceable as well as protected.  Weeks and months rolled away, and
+Lenny still read, not only the books lent him by the doctor, but those he
+bought of Mr. Sprott.  As for the bombs and shells against religion which
+the tinker carried in his bag, Lenny was not induced to blow himself up
+with them.  He had been reared from his cradle in simple love and
+reverence for the Divine Father, and the tender Saviour, whose life
+beyond all records of human goodness, whose death beyond all epics of
+mortal heroism, no being whose infancy has been taught to supplicate the
+Merciful and adore the Holy, yea, even though his later life may be
+entangled amidst the thorns of some desolate pyrrhonism, can ever hear
+reviled and scoffed without a shock to the conscience and a revolt of the
+heart.  As the deer recoils by instinct from the tiger, as the very look
+of the scorpion deters you from handling it, though you never saw a
+scorpion before, so the very first line in some ribald profanity on which
+the tinker put his black finger made Lenny's blood run cold.  Safe, too,
+was the peasant boy from any temptation in works of a gross and
+licentious nature, not only because of the happy ignorance of his rural
+life, but because of a more enduring safeguard,--genius!  Genius, that,
+manly, robust, healthful as it be, is long before it lose its instinctive
+Dorian modesty; shamefaced, because so susceptible to glory,--genius,
+that loves indeed to dream, but on the violet bank, not the dunghill.
+Wherefore, even in the error of the senses, it seeks to escape from the
+sensual into worlds of fancy, subtle and refined.  But apart from the
+passions, true genius is the most practical of all human gifts.  Like the
+Apollo, whom the Greek worshipped as its type, even Arcady is its exile,
+not its home.  Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempe, it ascends to its
+mission,--the Archer of the silver bow, the guide of the car of light.
+Speaking more plainly, genius is the enthusiasm for self-improvement; it
+ceases or sleeps the moment it desists from seeking some object which it
+believes of value, and by that object it insensibly connects its self-
+improvement with the positive advance of the world.  At present Lenny's
+genius had no bias that was not to the Positive and Useful.  It took the
+direction natural to its sphere, and the wants therein,--namely, to the
+arts which we call mechanical.  He wanted to know about steam-engines and
+Artesian wells; and to know about them it was necessary to know something
+of mechanics and hydrostatics; so he bought popular elementary works on
+those mystic sciences, and set all the powers of his mind at work on
+experiments.
+
+Noble and generous spirits are ye, who, with small care for fame, and
+little reward from pelf, have opened to the intellects of the poor the
+portals of wisdom!  I honour and revere ye; only do not think ye have
+done all that is needful.  Consider, I pray ye, whether so good a choice
+from the tinker's bag would have been made by a boy whom religion had not
+scared from the Pestilent, and genius had not led to the self-improving.
+And Lenny did not wholly escape from the mephitic portions of the motley
+elements from which his awakening mind drew its nurture.  Think not it
+was all pure oxygen that the panting lip drew in.  No; there were still
+those inflammatory tracts.  Political I do not like to call them, for
+politics means the art of government, and the tracts I speak of assailed
+all government which mankind has hitherto recognized.  Sad rubbish,
+perhaps, were such tracts to you, O sound thinker, in your easy-chair!
+or to you, practised statesman, at your post on the Treasury Bench; to
+you, calm dignitary of a learned Church; or to you, my lord judge, who
+may often have sent from your bar to the dire Orcus of Norfolk's Isle the
+ghosts of men whom that rubbish, falling simultaneously on the bumps of
+acquisitiveness and combativeness, hath untimely slain!  Sad rubbish to
+you!  But seems it such rubbish to the poor man, to whom it promises a
+paradise on the easy terms of upsetting a world?  For, ye see, those
+"Appeals to Operatives" represent that same world-upsetting as the
+simplest thing imaginable,--a sort of two-and-two-make-four proposition.
+The poor have only got to set their strong hands to the axle, and heave-
+a-boy! and hurrah for the topsy-turvy!  Then just to put a little
+wholesome rage into the heave-a-hoy! it is so facile to accompany the
+eloquence of "Appeals" with a kind of stir-the-bile-up statistics,--
+"Abuses of the aristocracy," "Jobs of the Priesthood," "Expenses of the
+Army kept up for Peers' younger sons," "Wars contracted for the villanous
+purpose of raising the rents of the landowners,"--all arithmetically
+dished up, and seasoned with tales of every gentleman who has committed a
+misdeed, every clergyman who has dishonoured his cloth; as if such
+instances were fair specimens of average gentlemen and ministers of
+religion!  All this, passionately advanced (and, observe, never answered,
+for that literature admits no controversialists, and the writer has it
+all his own way), may be rubbish; but it is out of such rubbish that
+operatives build barricades for attack, and legislators prisons for
+defence.
+
+Our poor friend Lenny drew plenty of this stuff from the tinker's bag.
+He thought it very clever and very eloquent; and he supposed the
+statistics were as true as mathematical demonstrations.
+
+A famous knowledge-diffuser is looking over my shoulder, and tells me,
+"Increase education, and cheapen good books, and all this rubbish will
+disappear!"  Sir, I don't believe a word of it.  If you printed Ricardo
+and Adam Smith at a farthing a volume, I still believe that they would be
+as little read by the operatives as they are nowadays by a very large
+proportion of highly-cultivated men.  I still believe that, while the
+press works, attacks on the rich and propositions for heave-a-hoys will
+always form a popular portion of the Literature of Labour.  There's Lenny
+Fairfield reading a treatise on hydraulics, and constructing a model for
+a fountain into the bargain; but that does not prevent his acquiescence
+in any proposition for getting rid of a National Debt, which he certainly
+never agreed to pay, and which he is told makes sugar and tea so
+shamefully dear.  No.  I tell you what does a little counteract those
+eloquent incentives to break his own head against the strong walls of the
+Social System,--it is, that he has two eyes in that head which are not
+always employed in reading.  And having been told in print that masters
+are tyrants, parsons hypocrites or drones in the hive, and landowners
+vampires and bloodsuckers, he looks out into the little world around him,
+and, first, he is compelled to acknowledge that his master is not a
+tyrant (perhaps because he is a foreigner and a philosopher, and, for
+what I and Lenny know, a republican).  But then Parson Dale, though High
+Church to the marrow, is neither hypocrite nor drone.  He has a very good
+living, it is true,--much better than he ought to have, according to the
+"political" opinions of those tracts! but Lenny is obliged to confess
+that if Parson Dale were a penny the poorer, he would do a pennyworth's
+less good; and comparing one parish with another, such as Rood Hall and
+Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that there is no greater CIVILIZER than a
+parson tolerably well off.  Then, too, Squire Hazeldean, though as arrant
+a Tory as ever stood upon shoe-leather, is certainly not a vampire nor
+blood sucker.  He does not feed on the public; a great many of the public
+feed upon him: and, therefore, his practical experience a little staggers
+and perplexes Lenny Fairfield as to the gospel accuracy of his
+theoretical dogmas.  Masters, parsons, and landowners! having, at the
+risk of all popularity, just given a /coup de patte/ to certain sages
+extremely the fashion at present, I am not going to let you off without
+an admonitory flea in the ear.  Don't suppose that any mere scribbling
+and typework will suffice to answer the scribbling and typework set at
+work to demolish you,--write down that rubbish you can't; live it down
+you may.  If you are rich, like Squire Hazeldean, do good with your
+money; if you are poor, like Signor Riccabocca, do good with your
+kindness.
+
+See! there is Lenny now receiving his week's wages; and though Lenny
+knows that he can get higher wages in the very next parish, his blue eyes
+are sparkling with gratitude, not at the chink of the money, but at the
+poor exile's friendly talk on things apart from all service; while
+Violante is descending the steps from the terrace, charged by her mother-
+in-law with a little basket of sago, and such-like delicacies, for Mrs.
+Fairfield, who has been ailing the last few days.
+
+Lenny will see the tinker as he goes home, and he will buy a most
+Demosthenean "Appeal,"--a tract of tracts, upon the propriety of Strikes
+and the Avarice of Masters.  But, somehow or other, I think a few words
+from Signor Riccabocca, that did not cost the signor a farthing, and the
+sight of his mother's smile at the contents of the basket, which cost
+very little, will serve to neutralize the effects of that "Appeal" much
+more efficaciously than the best article a Brougham or a Mill could write
+on the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Spring had come again; and one beautiful May day, Leonard Fairfield sat
+beside the little fountain which he had now actually constructed in the
+garden.  The butterflies were hovering over the belt of flowers which he
+had placed around his fountain, and the birds were singing overhead.
+Leonard Fairfield was resting from his day's work, to enjoy his
+abstemious dinner, beside the cool play of the sparkling waters, and,
+with the yet keener appetite of knowledge, he devoured his book as he
+munched his crusts.
+
+A penny tract is the shoeing-horn of literature! it draws on a great many
+books, and some too tight to be very useful in walking.  The penny tract
+quotes a celebrated writer--you long to read him; it props a startling
+assertion by a grave authority--you long to refer to it.  During the
+nights of the past winter, Leonard's intelligence had made vast progress;
+he had taught himself more than the elements of mechanics, and put to
+practice the principles he had acquired not only in the hydraulical
+achievement of the fountain, nor in the still more notable application of
+science, commenced on the stream in which Jackeymo had fished for
+minnows, and which Lenny had diverted to the purpose of irrigating two
+fields, but in various ingenious contrivances for the facilitation or
+abridgment of labour, which had excited great wonder and praise in the
+neighbourhood.  On the other hand, those rabid little tracts, which dealt
+so summarily with the destinies of the human race, even when his growing
+reason and the perusal of works more classical or more logical had led
+him to perceive that they were illiterate, and to suspect that they
+jumped from premises to conclusions with a celerity very different from
+the careful ratiocination of mechanical science, had still, in the
+citations and references wherewith they abounded, lured him on to
+philosophers more specious and more perilous.  Out of the tinker's bag he
+had drawn a translation of Condorcet's "Progress of Man" and another of
+Rousseau's "Social Contract."  Works so eloquent had induced him to
+select from the tracts in the tinker's miscellany those which abounded
+most in professions of philanthropy, and predictions of some coming
+Golden Age, to which old Saturn's was a joke,--tracts so mild and mother-
+like in their language, that it required a much more practical experience
+than Lenny's to perceive that you would have to pass a river of blood
+before you had the slightest chance of setting foot on the flowery
+banks on which they invited you to repose; tracts which rouged poor
+Christianity on the cheeks, clapped a crown of innocent daffodillies on
+her head, and set her to dancing a /pas de zephyr/ in the pastoral ballet
+in which Saint-Simon pipes to the flock he shears; or having first laid
+it down as a preliminary axiom that--
+
+         "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
+          The solemn temples, the great globe itself,--
+          Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,"
+
+substituted in place thereof M. Fourier's symmetrical phalanstere, or Mr.
+Owen's architectural parallelogram.  It was with some such tract that
+Lenny was seasoning his crusts and his radishes, when Riccabocca, bending
+his long dark face over the student's shoulder, said abruptly,--
+
+"/Diavolo/, my friend! what on earth have you got there?  Just let me
+look at it, will you?"
+
+Leonard rose respectfully, and coloured deeply as he surrendered the
+tract to Riccabocca.
+
+The wise man read the first page attentively, the second more cursorily,
+and only ran his eye over the rest.  He had gone through too vast a range
+of problems political, not to have passed over that venerable /Pons
+Asinorum/ of Socialism, on which Fouriers and Saint-Simons sit
+straddling, and cry aloud that they have arrived at the last boundary
+of knowledge!
+
+"All this is as old as the hills," quoth Riccabocca, irreverently; "but
+the hills stand still, and this--there it goes!" and the sage pointed to
+a cloud emitted from his pipe.  "Did you ever read Sir David Brewster on
+Optical Delusions?  No!  Well, I'll lend it to you.  You will find
+therein a story of a lady who always saw a black cat on her hearth-rug.
+The black cat existed only in her fancy, but the hallucination was
+natural and reasonable,--eh, what do you think?"
+
+"Why, sir," said Leonard, not catching the Italian's meaning, "I don't
+exactly see that it was natural and reasonable."
+
+"Foolish boy, yes!  because black cats are things possible and known.
+But who ever saw upon earth a community of men such as sit on the hearth-
+rugs of Messrs. Owen and Fourier?  If the lady's hallucination was not
+reasonable, what is his who believes in such visions as these?"
+
+Leonard bit his lip.
+
+"My dear boy," cried Riccabocca, kindly, "the only thing sure and
+tangible to which these writers would lead you lies at the first step,
+and that is what is commonly called a Revolution.  Now, I know what that
+is.  I have gone, not indeed through a revolution, but an attempt at
+one."
+
+Leonard raised his eyes towards his master with a look of profound
+respect and great curiosity.
+
+"Yes," added Riccabocca, and the face on which the boy gazed exchanged
+its usual grotesque and sardonic expression for one animated, noble, and
+heroic.  "Yes, not a revolution for chimeras, but for that cause which
+the coldest allow to be good, and which, when successful, all time
+approves as divine,--the redemption of our native soil from the rule of
+the foreigner!  I have shared in such an attempt.  And," continued the
+Italian, mournfully, "recalling now all the evil passions it arouses, all
+the ties it dissolves, all the blood that it commands to flow, all the
+healthful industry it arrests, all the madmen that it arms, all the
+victims that it dupes, I question whether one man really honest, pure,
+and humane, who has once gone through such an ordeal, would ever hazard
+it again, unless he was assured that the victory was certain,--ay, and
+the object for which he fights not to be wrested from his hands amidst
+the uproar of the elements that the battle has released."
+
+The Italian paused, shaded his brow with his hand, and remained long
+silent.  Then, gradually resuming his ordinary tone, he continued,--
+
+"Revolutions that have no definite objects made clear by the positive
+experience of history; revolutions, in a word, that aim less at
+substituting one law or one dynasty for another, than at changing the
+whole scheme of society, have been little attempted by real statesmen.
+Even Lycurgus is proved to be a myth who never existed.  Such organic
+changes are but in the day-dreams of philosophers who lived apart from
+the actual world, and whose opinions (though generally they were very
+benevolent, good sort of men, and wrote in an elegant poetical style) one
+would no more take on a plain matter of life, than one would look upon
+Virgil's Eclogues as a faithful picture of the ordinary pains and
+pleasures of the peasants who tend our sheep.  Read them as you would
+read poets, and they are delightful.  But attempt to shape the world
+according to the poetry, and fit yourself for a madhouse.  The farther
+off the age is from the realization of such projects, the more these poor
+philosophers have indulged them.  Thus, it was amidst the saddest
+corruption of court manners that it became the fashion in Paris to sit
+for one's picture with a crook in one's hand, as Alexis or Daphne.  Just
+as liberty was fast dying out of Greece, and the successors of Alexander
+were founding their monarchies, and Rome was growing up to crush in its
+iron grasp all States save its own, Plato withdraws his eyes from the
+world, to open them in his dreamy "Atlantis."  Just in the grimmest
+period of English history, with the axe hanging over his head, Sir Thomas
+More gives you his "Utopia."  Just when the world is to be the theatre of
+a new Sesostris, the sages of France tell you that the age is too
+enlightened for war, that man is henceforth to be governed by pure
+reason, and live in a paradise.  Very pretty reading all this to a man
+like me, Lenny, who can admire and smile at it.  But to you, to the man
+who has to work for his living, to the man who thinks it would be so much
+more pleasant to live at his ease in a phalanstere than to work eight or
+ten hours a day; to the man of talent and action and industry, whose
+future is invested in that tranquillity and order of a State in which
+talent and action and industry are a certain capital,--why, Messrs.
+Coutts, the great bankers, had better encourage a theory to upset the
+system of banking!  Whatever disturbs society, yea, even by a causeless
+panic, much more by an actual struggle, falls first upon the market of
+labour, and thence affects prejudicially every department of
+intelligence.  In such times the arts are arrested; literature is
+neglected; people are too busy to read anything save appeals to their
+passions.  And capital, shaken in its sense of security, no longer
+ventures boldly through the land, calling forth all the energies of toil
+and enterprise, and extending to every workman his reward.  Now, Lenny,
+take this piece of advice.  You are young, clever, and aspiring: men
+rarely succeed in changing the world; but a man seldom fails of success
+if he lets the world alone, and resolves to make the best of it.  You are
+in the midst of the great crisis of your life; it is the struggle between
+the new desires knowledge excites, and that sense of poverty which those
+desires convert either into hope and emulation, or into envy and despair.
+I grant that it is an up-hill work that lies before you; but don't you
+think it is always easier to climb a mountain than it is to level it?
+These books call on you to level the mountain; and that mountain is the
+property of other people, subdivided amongst a great many proprietors,
+and protected by law.  At the first stroke of the pickaxe, it is ten to
+one but what you are taken up for a trespass.  But the path up the
+mountain is a right of way uncontested.  You may be safe at the summit,
+before (even if the owners are fools enough to let you) you could
+have levelled a yard.  Cospetto!" quoth the doctor, "it is more than two
+thousand years ago since poor Plato began to level it, and the mountain
+is as high as ever!"
+
+Thus saying, Riccabocca came to the end of his pipe, and stalking
+thoughtfully away, he left Leonard Fairfield trying to extract light from
+the smoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Shortly after this discourse of Riccabocca's, an incident occurred to
+Leonard that served to carry his mind into new directions.  One evening,
+when his mother was out, he was at work on a new mechanical contrivance,
+and had the misfortune to break one of the instruments which he employed.
+Now it will be remembered that his father had been the squire's head
+carpenter: the widow had carefully hoarded the tools of his craft, which
+had belonged to her poor Mark; and though she occasionally lent them to
+Leonard, she would not give them up to his service.  Amongst these
+Leonard knew that he should find the one that he wanted; and being much
+interested in his contrivance, he could not wait till his mother's
+return.  The tools, with other little relies of the lost, were kept in a
+large trunk in Mrs. Fairfield's sleepingroom; the trunk was not locked,
+and Leonard went to it with out ceremony or scruple.  In rummaging for
+the instrument his eye fell upon a bundle of manuscripts; and he suddenly
+recollected that when he was a mere child, and before he much knew the
+difference between verse and prose, his mother had pointed to these
+manuscripts, and said, "One day or other, when you can read nicely, I'll
+let you look at these, Lenny.  My poor Mark wrote such verses--ah, he was
+a schollard!"  Leonard, reasonably enough, thought that the time had now
+arrived when he was worthy the privilege of reading the paternal
+effusions, and he took forth the manuscripts with a keen but melancholy
+interest.  He recognized his father's handwriting, which he had often
+seen before in account-books and memoranda, and read eagerly some
+trifling poems, which did not show much genius, nor much mastery of
+language and rhythm,--such poems, in short, as a self-educated man, with
+poetic taste and feeling rather than poetic inspiration or artistic
+culture, might compose with credit, but not for fame.  But suddenly, as
+he turned over these "Occasional Pieces," Leonard came to others in a
+different handwriting,--a woman's handwriting, small and fine and
+exquisitely formed.  He had scarcely read six lines of these last, before
+his attention was irresistibly chained.  They were of a different order
+of merit from poor Mark's; they bore the unmistakable stamp of genius.
+Like the poetry of women in general, they were devoted to personal
+feeling,--they were not the mirror of a world, but reflections of a
+solitary heart.  Yet this is the kind of poetry most pleasing to the
+young.  And the verses in question had another attraction for Leonard:
+they seemed to express some struggle akin to his own,--some complaint
+against the actual condition of the writer's life, some sweet melodious
+murmurs at fortune.  For the rest, they were characterized by a vein of
+sentiment so elevated, that, if written by a man, it would have run into
+exaggeration; written by a woman, the romance was carried off by so many
+genuine revelations of sincere, deep, pathetic feeling, that it was
+always natural, though true to a nature for which you would not augur
+happiness.
+
+Leonard was still absorbed in the perusal of these poems when Mrs.
+Fairfield entered the room.
+
+"What have you been about, Lenny,--searching in my box?"
+
+"I came to look for my father's bag of tools, Mother, and I found these
+papers, which you said I might read some day."
+
+"I does n't wonder you did not hear me when I came in," said the widow,
+sighing.  "I used to sit still for the hour together, when my poor Mark
+read his poems to me.  There was such a pretty one about the 'Peasant's
+Fireside,' Lenny,--have you got hold of that?"
+
+"Yes, dear mother; and I remarked the allusion to you: it brought tears
+to my eyes.  But these verses are not my father's; whose are they?  They
+seem in a woman's handwriting."
+
+Mrs. Fairfield looked, changed colour, grew faint and seated herself.
+
+"Poor, poor Nora!" said she,  falteringly.  "I did not know as they were
+there; Mark kep' 'em; they got among his--"
+
+LEONARD.--"Who was Nora?"
+
+MRS. FAIRFIELD.--"Who?--child--who?  Nora was--was my own--own sister."
+
+LEONARD (in great amaze, contrasting his ideal of the writer of these
+musical lines, in that graceful hand, with his homely uneducated mother,
+who could neither read nor write).--"Your sister!  is it possible!  My
+aunt, then.  How comes it you never spoke of her before?  Oh, you should
+be so proud of her, Mother!"
+
+MRS. FAIRFIELD (clasping her hands).--"We were proud of her, all of us,--
+father, mother, all!  She was so beautiful and so good, and not proud
+she! though she looked like the first lady in the land.  Oh, Nora, Nora!"
+
+LEONARD (after a pause).--"But she must have been highly educated?"
+
+MRS. FAIRFIELD.--"'Deed she was!"
+
+LEONARD.--"How was that?"
+
+MRS. FAIRFIELD (rocking herself to and fro in her chair).--"Oh, my Lady
+was her godmother,--Lady Lansmere I mean,--and took a fancy to her when
+she was that high, and had her to stay at the Park, and wait on her
+Ladyship; and then she put her to school, and Nora was so clever that
+nothing would do but she must go to London as a governess.  But don't
+talk of it, boy! don't talk of it!"
+
+LEONARD.--"Why not, Mother?  What has become of her; where is she?"
+
+MRS. FAIRFIELD (bursting into a paroxysm of tears).--"In her grave,--in
+her cold grave!  Dead, dead!"
+
+Leonard was inexpressibly grieved and shocked.  It is the attribute of
+the poet to seem always living, always a friend.  Leonard felt as if some
+one very dear had been suddenly torn from his heart.  He tried to console
+his mother; but her emotion was contagious, and he wept with her.
+
+"And how long has she been dead?" he asked at last, in mournful accents.
+
+"Many's the long year, many; but," added Mrs. Fairfield, rising, and
+putting her tremulous hand on Leonard's shoulder, "you'll just never talk
+to me about her; I can't bear it, it breaks my heart.  I can bear better
+to talk of Mark; come downstairs,--come."
+
+"May I not keep these verses, Mother?  Do let me."
+
+"Well, well, those bits o' paper be all she left behind her,--yes, keep
+them, but put back Mark's.  Are they all here,--sure?"  And the widow,
+though she could not read her husband's verses, looked jealously at the
+manuscripts written in his irregular, large scrawl, and, smoothing them
+carefully, replaced them in the trunk, and resettled over them some
+sprigs of lavender, which Leonard had unwittingly disturbed.
+
+"But," said Leonard, as his eye again rested on the beautiful handwriting
+of his lost aunt,--"but you called her Nora--I see she signs herself L."
+
+"Leonora was her name.  I said she was my Lady's god-child.  We call her
+Nora for short--"
+
+"Leonora--and I am Leonard--is that how I came by the name?"
+
+"Yes, yes; do hold your tongue, boy," sobbed poor Mrs. Fairfield; and she
+could not be soothed nor coaxed into continuing or renewing a subject
+which was evidently associated with insupportable pain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+It is difficult to exaggerate the effect that this discovery produced on
+Leonard's train of thought.  Some one belonging to his own humble race
+had, then, preceded him in his struggling flight towards the loftier
+regions of Intelligence and Desire.  It was like the mariner amidst
+unknown seas, who finds carved upon some desert isle a familiar household
+name.
+
+And this creature of genius and of sorrow-whose existence he had only
+learned by her song, and whose death created, in the simple heart of her
+sister, so passionate a grief, after the lapse of so many years--supplied
+to the romance awaking in his young heart the ideal which it
+unconsciously sought.  He was pleased to hear that she had been beautiful
+and good.  He paused from his books to muse on her, and picture her image
+to his fancy.  That there was some mystery in her fate was evident to
+him; and while that conviction deepened his interest, the mystery itself
+by degrees took a charm which he was not anxious to dispel.  He resigned
+himself to Mrs. Fairfield's obstinate silence.  He was contented to rank
+the dead amongst those holy and ineffable images which we do not seek to
+unveil.  Youth and Fancy have many secret hoards of idea which they do
+not desire to impart, even to those most in their confidence.  I doubt
+the depth of feeling in any man who has not certain recesses in his soul
+into which none may enter.
+
+Hitherto, as I have said, the talents of Leonard Fairfield had been more
+turned to things positive than to the ideal,--to science and
+investigation of fact than to poetry, and that airier truth in which
+poetry has its element.  He had read our greater poets, indeed, but
+without thought of imitating; and rather from the general curiosity to
+inspect all celebrated monuments of the human mind than from that
+especial predilection for verse which is too common in childhood and
+youth to be any sure sign of a poet.  But now these melodies, unknown to
+all the world beside, rang in his ear, mingled with his thoughts,--set,
+as it were, his whole life to music.  He read poetry with a different
+sentiment,--it seemed to him that he had discovered its secret.  And so
+reading, the passion seized him, and "the numbers came."
+
+To many minds, at the commencement of our grave and earnest pilgrimage,
+I am Vandal enough to think that the indulgence of poetic taste and
+revery does great and lasting harm; that it serves to enervate the
+character, give false ideas of life, impart the semblance of drudgery to
+the noble toils and duties of the active man.  All poetry would not do
+this,--not, for instance, the Classical, in its diviner masters; not the
+poetry of Homer, of Virgil, of Sophocles; not, perhaps, even that of the
+indolent Horace.  But the poetry which youth usually loves and
+appreciates the best--the poetry of mere sentiment--does so in minds
+already over-predisposed to the sentimental, and which require bracing to
+grow into healthful manhood.
+
+On the other hand, even this latter kind of poetry, which is peculiarly
+modern, does suit many minds of another mould,--minds which our modern
+life, with its hard positive forms, tends to produce.  And as in certain
+climates plants and herbs, peculiarly adapted as antidotes to those
+diseases most prevalent in the atmosphere, are profusely sown, as it
+were, by the benignant providence of Nature, so it may be that the softer
+and more romantic species of poetry, which comes forth in harsh, money-
+making, unromantic times, is intended as curatives and counter-poisons.
+The world is so much with us, nowadays, that we need have something that
+prates to us, albeit even in too fine a euphuism, of the moon and stars.
+
+Certes, to Leonard Fairfield, at that period of his intellectual life,
+the softness of our Helicon descended as healing dews.  In his turbulent
+and unsettled ambition, in his vague grapple with the giant forms of
+political truths, in his bias towards the application of science to
+immediate practical purposes, this lovely vision of the Muse came in the
+white robe of the Peacemaker; and with upraised hand pointing to serene
+skies, she opened to him fair glimpses of the Beautiful, which is given
+to Peasant as to Prince,--showed to him that on the surface of earth
+there is something nobler than fortune, that he who can view the world as
+a poet is always at soul a king; while to practical purpose itself, that
+larger and more profound invention, which poetry stimulates, supplied the
+grand design and the subtle view,--leading him beyond the mere ingenuity
+of the mechanic, and habituating him to regard the inert force of the
+matter at his command with the ambition of the Discoverer.  But, above
+all, the discontent that was within him finding a vent, not in deliberate
+war upon this actual world, but through the purifying channels of song,
+in the vent itself it evaporated, it was lost.  By accustoming ourselves
+to survey all things with the spirit that retains and reproduces them
+only in their lovelier or grander aspects, a vast philosophy of
+toleration for what we before gazed on with scorn or hate insensibly
+grows upon us.  Leonard looked into his heart after the Enchantress had
+breathed upon it; and through the mists of the fleeting and tender
+melancholy which betrayed where she had been, he beheld a new sun of
+delight and joy dawning over the landscape of human life.
+
+Thus, though she was dead and gone from his actual knowledge, this
+mysterious kinswoman--"a voice, and nothing more"--had spoken to him,
+soothed, elevated, cheered, attuned each discord into harmony; and if now
+permitted from some serener sphere to behold the life that her soul thus
+strangely influenced, verily with yet holier joy the saving and lovely
+spirit might have glided onward in the Eternal Progress.
+
+We call the large majority of human lives obscure.  Presumptuous that we
+are!  How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of
+nameless graves may have lighted to renown?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+It was about a year after Leonard's discovery of the family manuscripts
+that Parson Dale borrowed the quietest pad-mare in the squire's stables,
+and set out on an equestrian excursion.  He said that he was bound on
+business connected with his old parishioners of Lansmere; for, as it has
+been incidentzlly implied in a previous chapter, he had been connected
+with that borough town (and, I may here add, in the capacity of curate)
+before he had been inducted into the living of Hazeldean.
+
+It was so rarely that the parson stirred from home, that this journey
+to a town more than twenty miles off was regarded as a most daring
+adventure, both at the Hall and at the Parsonage.  Mrs. Dale could not
+sleep the whole previous night with thinking of it; and though she had
+naturally one of her worst nervous headaches on the eventful morn, she
+yet suffered no hands less thoughtful than her own to pack up the saddle-
+bags which the parson had borrowed along with the pad.  Nay, so
+distrustful was she of the possibility of the good man's exerting the
+slightest common-sense in her absence, that she kept him close at her
+side while she was engaged in that same operation of packing-up,--showing
+him the exact spot in which the clean shirt was put; and how nicely the
+old slippers were packed up in one of his own sermons.  She implored him
+not to mistake the sandwiches for his shaving-soap, and made him observe
+how carefully she had provided against such confusion, by placing them as
+far apart from each other as the nature of saddle-bags will admit.  The
+poor parson--who was really by no means an absent man, but as little
+likely to shave himself with sandwiches and lunch upon soap as the most
+commonplace mortal may be--listened with conjugal patience, and thought
+that man never had such a wife before; nor was it without tears in his
+own eyes that he tore himself from the farewell embrace of his weeping
+Carry.
+
+I confess, however, that it was with some apprehension that he set his
+foot in the stirrup, and trusted his person to the mercies of an
+unfamiliar animal.  For, whatever might be Mr. Dale's minor
+accomplishments as man and parson, horsemanship was not his forte.
+Indeed, I doubt if he had taken the reins in his hand more than twice
+since he had been married.
+
+The squire's surly old groom, Mat, was in attendance with the pad; and,
+to the parson's gentle inquiry whether Mat was quite sure that the pad
+was quite safe, replied laconically, "Oi, oi; give her her head."
+
+"Give her her head!" repeated Mr. Dale, rather amazed, for he had not the
+slightest intention of taking away that part of the beast's frame, so
+essential to its vital economy,--"give her her head!"
+
+"Oi, oi; and don't jerk her up like that, or she'll fall a doincing on
+her hind-legs."
+
+The parson instantly slackened the reins; and Mrs. Dale--who had tarried
+behind to control her tears--now running to the door for "more last
+words," he waved his hand with courageous amenity, and ambled forth into
+the lane.
+
+Our equestrian was absorbed at first in studying the idiosyncrasies of
+the pad-mare, and trying thereby to arrive at some notion of her general
+character: guessing, for instance, why she raised one ear and laid down
+the other; why she kept bearing so close to the left that she brushed his
+leg against the hedge; and why, when she arrived at a little side-gate in
+the fields, which led towards the home-farm, she came to a full stop, and
+fell to rubbing her nose against the rail,--an occupation from which the
+parson, finding all civil remonstrances in vain, at length diverted her
+by a timorous application of the whip.
+
+This crisis on the road fairly passed, the pad seemed to comprehend that
+she had a journey before her, and giving a petulant whisk of her tail,
+quickened her amble into a short trot, which soon brought the parson into
+the high road, and nearly opposite the Casino.
+
+Here, sitting on the gate which led to his abode, and shaded by his
+umbrella, he beheld Dr. Riccabocca.
+
+The Italian lifted his eyes from the book he was reading, and stared hard
+at the parson; and he--not venturing to withdraw his whole attention from
+the pad (who, indeed, set up both her ears at the apparition of
+Riccabocca, and evinced symptoms of that surprise and superstitious
+repugnance at unknown objects which goes by the name of "shying")--looked
+askance at Riccabocca.
+
+"Don't stir, please," said the parson, "or I fear you'll alarm the
+creature; it seems a nervous, timid thing;--soho, gently, gently."
+
+And he fell to patting the mare with great unction.
+
+The pad, thus encouraged, overcame her first natural astonishment at the
+sight of Riccabocca and the red umbrella; and having before been at the
+Casino on sundry occasions, and sagaciously preferring places within the
+range of her experience to bourns neither cognate nor conjecturable, she
+moved gravely up towards the gate on which the Italian sat; and, after
+eying him a moment,--as much as to say, "I wish you would get off,"--came
+to a deadlock.
+
+"Well," said Riccabocca, "since your horse seems more disposed to be
+polite to me than yourself, Mr. Dale, I take the opportunity of your
+present involuntary pause to congratulate you on your elevation in life,
+and to breathe a friendly prayer that pride may not have a fall!"
+
+"Tut," said the parson, affecting an easy air, though still contemplating
+the pad, who appeared to have fallen into a quiet doze, "it is true that
+I have not ridden much of late years, and the squire's horses are very
+high-fed and spirited; but there is no more harm in them than their
+master when one once knows their ways."
+
+                       "'Chi va piano va sano,
+                         E chi va sano va lontano,'"
+
+said Riccabocca, pointing to the saddle-bags.  "You go slowly, therefore
+safely; and he who goes safely may go far.  You seem prepared for a
+journey?"
+
+"I am," said the parson; "and on a matter that concerns you a little."
+
+"Me!" exclaimed Riccabocca,--"concerns me!"
+
+"Yes, so far as the chance of depriving you of a servant whom you like
+and esteem affects you."
+
+"Oh," said Riccabocca, "I understand: you have hinted to me very often
+that I or Knowledge, or both together, have unfitted Leonard Fairfield
+for service."
+
+"I did not say that exactly; I said that you have fitted him for
+something higher than service.  But do not repeat this to him.  And I
+cannot yet say more to you, for I am very doubtful as to the success of
+my mission; and it will not do to unsettle poor Leonard until we are sure
+that we can improve his condition."
+
+"Of that you can never be sure," quoth the wise man, shaking his head;
+"and I can't say that I am unselfish enough not to bear you a grudge for
+seeking to decoy away from me an invaluable servant,--faithful, steady,
+intelligent, and (added Riccabocca, warming as he approached the
+climacteric adjective) "exceedingly cheap!  Nevertheless go, and Heaven
+speed you.  I am not an Alexander, to stand between man and the sun."
+
+"You are a noble, great-hearted creature, Signor Riccabocca, in spite of
+your cold-blooded proverbs and villanous books."  The parson, as he said
+this, brought down the whiphand with so indiscreet an enthusiasm on the
+pad's shoulder, that the poor beast, startled out of her innocent doze,
+made a bolt forward, which nearly precipitated Riccabocca from his seat
+on the stile, and then turning round--as the parson tugged desperately at
+the rein--caught the bit between her teeth, and set off at a canter.  The
+parson lost both his stirrups; and when he regained them (as the pad
+slackened her pace), and had time to breathe and look about him,
+Riccabocca and the Casino were both out of sight.
+
+"Certainly," quoth Parson Dale, as he resettled himself with great
+complacency, and a conscious triumph that he was still on the pad's
+back,--"certainly it is true 'that the noblest conquest ever made by man
+was that of the horse:' a fine creature it is,--a very fine creature,--
+and uncommonly difficult to sit on, especially without stirrups."  Firmly
+in his stirrups the parson planted his feet; and the heart within him was
+very proud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The borough town of Lansmere was situated in the county adjoining that
+which contained the village of Hazeldean.  Late at noon the parson
+crossed the little stream which divided the two shires, and came to an
+inn, which was placed at an angle, where the great main road branched off
+into two directions, the one leading towards Lansmere, the other going
+more direct to London.  At this inn the pad stopped, and put down both
+ears with the air of a pad who has made up her mind to bait.  And the
+parson himself, feeling very warm and somewhat sore, said to the pad,
+benignly, "It is just,--thou shalt have corn and water!"
+
+Dismounting, therefore, and finding himself very stiff as soon as he
+reached /terra firma/, the parson consigned the pad to the hostler, and
+walked into the sanded parlour of the inn, to repose himself on a very
+hard Windsor chair.
+
+He had been alone rather more than half-an-hour, reading a county
+newspaper which smelled much of tobacco, and trying to keep off the flies
+that gathered round him in swarms, as if they had never before seen a
+parson, and were anxious to ascertain how the flesh of him tasted,--when
+a stagecoach stopped at the inn.  A traveller got out with his carpetbag
+in his hand, and was shown into the sanded parlour.
+
+The parson rose politely, and made a bow.
+
+The traveller touched his hat, without taking it off, looked at Mr. Dale
+from top to toe, then walked to the window, and whistled a lively,
+impatient tune, then strode towards the fireplace and rang the bell; then
+stared again at the parson; and that gentleman having courteously laid
+down the newspaper, the traveller seized it, threw himself into a chair,
+flung one of his legs over the table, tossed the other up on the
+mantelpiece, and began reading the paper, while he tilted the chair on
+its hind-legs with so daring a disregard to the ordinary position of
+chairs and their occupants, that the shuddering parson expected every
+moment to see him come down on the back of his skull.
+
+Moved, therefore, to compassion, Mr. Dale said mildly,--"Those chairs are
+very treacherous, sir.  I'm afraid you'll be down."
+
+"Eh," said the traveller, looking up much astonished.  "Eh, down?--oh,
+you're satirical, sir."
+
+"Satirical, sir?  upon my word, no!" exclaimed the parson, earnestly.
+
+"I think every freeborn man has a right to sit as he pleases in his own
+house," resumed the traveller, with warmth; "and an inn is his own house,
+I guess, so long as he pays his score.  Betty, my dear."
+
+For the chambermaid had now replied to the bell.  "I han't Betty, sir; do
+you want she?"
+
+"No, Sally; cold brandy and water--and a biscuit."
+
+"I han't Sally, either," muttered the chambermaid; but the traveller,
+turning round, showed so smart a neckcloth and so comely a face, that she
+smiled, coloured, and went her way.
+
+The traveller now rose, and flung down the paper.  He took out a
+penknife, and began paring his nails.  Suddenly desisting from this
+elegant occupation, his eye caught sight of the parson's shovel-hat,
+which lay on a chair in the corner.
+
+"You're a clergyman, I reckon, sir," said the traveller, with a slight
+sneer.
+
+Again Mr. Dale bowed,--bowed in part deprecatingly, in part with dignity.
+It was a bow that said, "No offence, sir, but I am a clergyman, and I'm
+not ashamed of it."
+
+"Going far?" asked the traveller.
+
+PARSON.--"Not very."
+
+TRAVELLER.--"In a chaise or fly?  If so, and we are going the same way,
+halves."
+
+PARSON.--"Halves?"
+
+TRAVELLER.--"Yes, I'll pay half the damage, pikes inclusive."
+
+PARSON.--"You are very good, sir.  But" (spoken with pride) "I am on
+horseback."
+
+TRAVELLER.--"On horseback!  Well, I should not have guessed that!  You
+don't look like it.  Where did you say you were going?"
+
+"I did not say where I was going, sir," said the parson, dryly, for he
+was much offended at that vague and ungrammatical remark applicable to
+his horsemanship, that "he did not look like it."
+
+"Close!" said the traveller, laughing; "an old traveller, I reckon."
+
+The parson made no reply, but he took up his shovel-hat, and, with a bow
+more majestic than the previous one, walked out to see if his pad had
+finished her corn.
+
+The animal had indeed finished all the corn afforded to her, which was
+not much, and in a few minutes more Mr. Dale resumed his journey.  He had
+performed about three miles, when the sound of wheels behind him made him
+turn his head; and he perceived a chaise driven very fast, while out of
+the windows thereof dangled strangely a pair of human legs.  The pad
+began to curvet as the post-horses rattled behind, and the parson had
+only an indistinct vision of a human face supplanting those human legs.
+The traveller peered out at him as he whirled by,--saw Mr. Dale tossed up
+and down on the saddle, and cried out, "How's the leather?"
+
+"Leather!" soliloquized the parson, as the pad recomposed herself, "what
+does he mean by that?  Leather!  a very vulgar man.  But I got rid of him
+cleverly."
+
+Mr. Dale arrived without further adventure at Lansmere.  He put up at the
+principal inn, refreshed himself by a general ablution, and sat down with
+good appetite to his beefsteak and pint of port.
+
+The parson was a better judge of the physiognomy of man than that of the
+horse; and after a satisfactory glance at the civil smirking landlord,
+who removed the cover and set on the wine, he ventured on an attempt at
+conversation.  "Is my Lord at the Park?"
+
+LANDLORD (still more civilly than before).--"No, sir, his Lordship and my
+Lady have gone to town to meet Lord L'Estrange!"
+
+"Lord L'Estrange!  He is in England, then?"
+
+"Why, so I heard," replied the landlord, "but we never see him here now.
+I remember him a very pretty young man.  Every one was fond of him and
+proud of him.  But what pranks be did play when he was a lad!  We hoped
+he would come in for our boro' some of these days, but he has taken to
+foren parts,--more 's the pity.  I am a reg'lar Blue, sir, as I ought to
+be.  The Blue candidate always does me the honour to come to the Lansmere
+Arms.  'T is only the low party puts up with the Boar," added the
+landlord, with a look of ineffable disgust.  "I hope you like the wine,
+sir?"
+
+"Very good, and seems old."
+
+"Bottled these eighteen years, sir.  I had in the cask for the great
+election of Dashmore and Egerton.  I have little left of it, and I never
+give it but to old friends like,--for, I think, Sir, though you be grown
+stout, and look more grand, I may say that I've had the pleasure of
+seeing you before."
+
+"That's true, I dare say, though I fear I was never a very good
+customer."
+
+"Ah, it is Mr. Dale, then!  I thought so when you came into the hall.
+I hope your lady is quite well, and the squire too; fine pleasant-spoken
+gentleman; no fault of his if Mr. Egerton went wrong.  Well, we have
+never seen him--I mean Mr. Egerton--since that time.  I don't wonder he
+stays away; but my Lord's son, who was brought up here, it an't nat'ral
+like that he should turn his back on us!"
+
+Mr. Dale made no reply, and the landlord was about to retire, when the
+parson, pouring out another glass of the port, said, "There must be great
+changes in the parish.  Is Mr. Morgan, the medical man, still here?"
+
+"No, indeed!  he took out his 'ploma after you left, and became a real
+doctor; and a pretty practice he had too, when he took, all of a sudden,
+to some new-fangled way of physicking,--I think they calls it homy-
+something."
+
+"Homoeopathy?"
+
+"That's it; something against all reason: and so he lost his practice
+here and went up to Lunnun.  I've not heard of him since."
+
+"Do the Avenels still reside in their old house?"
+
+"Oh, yes!--and are pretty well off, I hear say.  John is always poorly,
+though he still goes now and then to the Odd Fellows, and takes his
+glass; but his wife comes and fetches him away before he can do himself
+any harm."
+
+"Mrs. Avenel is the same as ever?"
+
+"She holds her head higher, I think," said the landlord, smiling.  "She
+was always--not exactly proud like, but what I calls Bumptious."
+
+"I never heard that word before," said the parson, laying down his knife
+and fork.  "Bumptious indeed, though I believe it is not in the
+dictionary, has crept into familiar parlance, especially amongst young
+folks at school and college."
+
+"Bumptious is bumptious, and gumptious is Bumptious," said the landlord,
+delighted to puzzle a parson.  "Now the town beadle is bumptious, and
+Mrs. Avenel is Bumptious."
+
+"She is a very respectable woman," said Mr. Dale, somewhat rebukingly.
+
+"In course, sir, all gumptious folks are; they value themselves on their
+respectability, and looks down on their neighbours."
+
+PARSON (still philologically occupied).--"Gumptious--gumptious.  I think
+I remember the substantive at school,--not that my master taught it to
+me.  'Gumption'--it means cleverness."
+
+LANDLORD (doggedly).--"There's gumption and Bumptious!  Gumption is
+knowing; but when I say that sum 'un is gumptious, I mean--though that's
+more vulgar like--sum 'un who does not think small beer of hisself.  You
+take me, sir?"
+
+"I think I do," said the parson, half smiling.  "I believe the Avenels
+have only two of their children alive still,--their daughter who married
+Mark Fairfield, and a son who went off to America?"
+
+"Ah, but he made his fortune there and has come back."
+
+"Indeed!  I'm very glad to hear it.  He has settled at Lansmere?"
+
+"No, Sir.  I hear as he's bought a property a long way off.  But he comes
+to see his parents pretty often--so John tells me--but I can't say that I
+ever see him.  I fancy Dick does n't like to be seen by folks who
+remember him playing in the kennel."
+
+"Not unnatural," said the parson, indulgently; "but he visits his
+parents; he is a good son at all events, then?"
+
+"I've nothing to say against him.  Dick was a wild chap before he took
+himself off.  I never thought he would make his fortune; but the Avenels
+are a clever set.  Do you remember poor Nora--the Rose of Lansmere, as
+they called her?  Ah, no, I think she went up to Lunnun afore your time,
+sir."
+
+"Humph!" said the parson, dryly.  "Well, I think you may take away now.
+It will be dark soon, and I'll just stroll out and look about me."
+
+"There's a nice tart coming, sir."
+
+"Thank you, I've dined."
+
+The parson put on his hat and sallied forth into the streets.  He eyed
+the houses on either hand with that melancholy and wistful interest with
+which, in middle life, men revisit scenes familiar to them in youth,--
+surprised to find either so little change or so much, and recalling, by
+fits and snatches, old associations and past emotions.  The long High
+Street which he threaded now began to change its bustling character, and
+slide, as it were gradually, into the high road of a suburb.  On the
+left, the houses gave way to the moss-grown pales of Lansmere Park; to
+the right, though houses still remained, they were separated from each
+other by gardens, and took the pleasing appearance of villas,--such
+villas as retired tradesmen or their widows, old maids, and half-pay
+officers select for the evening of their days.
+
+Mr. Dale looked at these villas with the deliberate attention of a man
+awakening his power of memory, and at last stopped before one, almost the
+last on the road, and which faced the broad patch of sward that lay
+before the lodge of Lansmere Park.  An old pollard-oak stood near it, and
+from the oak there came a low discordant sound; it was the hungry cry of
+young ravens, awaiting the belated return of the parent bird!  Mr. Dale
+put his hand to his brow, paused a moment, and then, with a hurried step,
+passed through the little garden, and knocked at the door.  A light was
+burning in the parlour, and Mr. Dale's eye caught through the window a
+vague outline of three forms.  There was an evident bustle within at the
+sound of the knock.  One of the forms rose and disappeared.  A very prim,
+neat, middle-aged maid-servant now appeared at the threshold, and
+austerely inquired the visitor's business.
+
+"I want to see Mr. or Mrs. Avenel.  Say that I have come many miles to
+see them; and take in this card."
+
+The maid-servant took the card, and half closed the door.  At least three
+minutes elapsed before she reappeared.
+
+"Missis says it's late, sir; but walk in."
+
+The parson accepted the not very gracious invitation, stepped across the
+little hall, and entered the parlour.
+
+Old John Avenel, a mild-looking man, who seemed slightly paralytic, rose
+slowly from his armchair.  Mrs. Avenel, in an awfully stiff, clean,
+Calvinistical cap, and a gray dress, every fold of which bespoke
+respectability and staid repute, stood erect on the floor, and fixing on
+the parson a cold and cautious eye, said,--
+
+"You do the like of us great honour, Mr. Dale; take a chair.  You call
+upon business?"
+
+"Of which I apprised Mr. Avenel by letter."
+
+"My husband is very poorly."
+
+"A poor creature!" said John, feebly, and as if in compassion of himself.
+"I can't get about as I used to do.  But it ben't near election time, be
+it, sir?"
+
+"No, John," said Mrs. Avenel, placing her husband's arm within her own.
+"You must lie down a bit, while I talk to the gentleman."
+
+"I'm a real good Blue," said poor John; "but I ain't quite the man I
+was;" and leaning heavily on his wife, he left the room, turning round at
+the threshold, and saying, with great urbanity, "Anything to oblige,
+sir!"
+
+Mr. Dale was much touched.  He had remembered John Avenel the comeliest,
+the most active, and the most cheerful man in Lansmere; great at glee
+club and cricket (though then somewhat stricken in years), greater in
+vestries; reputed greatest in elections.
+
+"Last scene of all," murmured the parson; "and oh, well, turning from the
+poet, may we cry with the disbelieving philosopher, 'Poor, poor
+humanity!'"
+
+In a few minutes Mrs. Avenel returned.  She took a chair at some distance
+from the parson's, and resting one hand on the elbow of the chair, while
+with the other she stiffly smoothed the stiff gown, she said,--
+
+"Now, sir."
+
+That "Now, sir," had in its sound something sinister and warlike.  This
+the shrewd parson recognized with his usual tact.  He edged his chair
+nearer to Mrs. Avenel, and placing his hand on hers,--
+
+"Yes, now then, and as friend to friend."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Mr. Dale had been more than a quarter of an hour conversing with Mrs.
+Avenel, and had seemingly made little progress in the object of his
+diplomatic mission, for now, slowly drawing on his gloves, he said,--
+
+"I grieve to think, Mrs. Avenel, that you should have so hardened your
+heart--yes, you must pardon me,--it is my vocation to speak stern truths.
+You cannot say that I have not kept faith with you, but I must now invite
+you to remember that I specially reserved to myself the right of
+exercising a discretion to act as I judged best for the child's interest
+on any future occasion; and it was upon this understanding that you gave
+me the promise, which you would now evade, of providing for him when he
+came to manhood."
+
+"I say I will provide for him.  I say that you may 'prentice him in any
+distant town, and by and by we will stock a shop for him.  What would you
+have more, sir, from folks like us, who have kept shop ourselves?  It
+ain't reasonable what you ask, sir."
+
+"My dear friend," said the parson, "what I ask of you at present is but
+to see him, to receive him kindly, to listen to his conversation, to
+judge for yourselves.  We can have but a common object,--that your
+grandson should succeed in life, and do you credit.  Now, I doubt very
+much whether we can effect this by making him a small shopkeeper."
+
+"And has Jane Fairfield, who married a common carpenter, brought him up
+to despise small shopkeepers?" exclaimed Mrs. Avenel, angrily.
+
+"Heaven forbid!  Some of the first men in England have been the sons of
+small shopkeepers.  But is it a crime in them, or in their parents, if
+their talents have lifted them into such rank or renown as the haughtiest
+duke might envy?  England were not England if a man must rest where his
+father began."
+
+"Good!" said, or rather grunted, an approving voice, but neither Mrs.
+Avenel nor the parson heard it.
+
+"All very fine," said Mrs. Avenel, bluntly.  "But to send a boy like that
+to the University--where's the money to come from?"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Avenel," said the parson, coaxingly, "the cost need not be
+great at a small college at Cambridge; and if you will pay half the
+expense, I will pay the other half.  I have no children of my own, and
+can afford it."
+
+"That's very handsome in you, sir," said Mrs. Avenel, somewhat touched,
+yet still not graciously.  "But the money is not the only point."
+
+"Once at Cambridge," continued Mr. Dale, speaking rapidly, "at Cambridge,
+where the studies are mathematical,--that is, of a nature for which he
+has shown so great an aptitude,--and I have no doubt he will distinguish
+himself; if he does, he will obtain, on leaving, what is called a
+fellowship,--that is, a collegiate dignity accompanied by an income on
+which he could maintain himself until he made his way in life.  Come,
+Mrs. Avenel, you are well off; you have no relations nearer to you in
+want of your aid.  Your son, I hear, has been very fortunate."
+
+"Sir," said--Mrs. Avenel, interrupting the parson, "it is not because my
+son Richard is an honour to us, and is a good son, and has made his
+fortin, that we are to rob him of what we have to leave, and give it to a
+boy whom we know nothing about, and who, in spite of what you say, can't
+bring upon us any credit at all."
+
+"Why? I don't see that."
+
+"Why!" exclaimed Mrs. Avenel, fiercely,--"why!  you, know why.  No, I
+don't want him to rise in life: I don't want folks to be speiring and
+asking about him.  I think it is a very wicked thing to have put fine
+notions in his head, and I am sure my daughter Fairfield could not have
+done it herself.  And now, to ask me to rob Richard, and bring out a
+great boy--who's been a gardener or ploughman, or suchlike--to disgrace a
+gentleman who keeps his carriage, as my son Richard does--I would have
+you to know, sir.  No! I won't do it, and there's an end of the matter."
+
+During the last two or three minutes, and just before that approving
+"good" had responded to the parson's popular sentiment, a door
+communicating with an inner room had been gently opened, and stood ajar;
+but this incident neither party had even noticed.  But now the door was
+thrown boldly open, and the traveller whom the parson had met at the inn
+walked up to Mr. Dale, and said, "No! that's not the end of the matter.
+You say the boy's a 'cute, clever lad?"
+
+"Richard, have you been listening?" exclaimed Mrs. Avenel.
+
+"Well, I guess, yes,--the last few minutes."
+
+"And what have you heard?"
+
+"Why, that this reverend gentleman thinks so highly of my sister
+Fairfield's boy that he offers to pay half of his keep at college.  Sir,
+I'm very much obliged to you, and there's my hand if you'll take it."
+
+The parson jumped up, overjoyed, and, with a triumphant glance towards
+Mrs. Avenel, shook hands heartily with Mr. Richard.
+
+"Now," said the latter, "just put on your hat, sir, and take a stroll
+with me, and we'll discuss the thing businesslike.  Women don't
+understand business: never talk to women on business."
+
+With these words, Mr. Richard drew out a cigar-case, selected a cigar,
+which he applied to the candle, and walked into the hall.
+
+Mrs. Avenel caught hold of the parson.  "Sir, you'll be on your guard
+with Richard.  Remember your promise."
+
+"He does not know all, then?"
+
+"He?  No!  And you see he did not overhear more than what he says.  I'm
+sure you're a gentleman, and won't go against your word."
+
+"My word was conditional; but I will promise you never to break the
+silence without more reason than I think there is here for it.  Indeed,
+Mr. Richard Avenel seems to save all necessity for that."
+
+"Are you coming, sir?" cried Richard, as he opened the street-door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The parson joined Mr. Richard Avenel on the road.  It was a fine night,
+and the moon clear and shining.
+
+"So, then," said Mr. Richard, thoughtfully, "poor Jane, who was always
+the drudge of the family, has contrived to bring up her son well; and the
+boy is really what you say, eh,--could make a figure at college?"
+
+"I am sure of it," said the parson, hooking himself on to the arm which
+Mr. Avenel proffered.
+
+"I should like to see him," said Richard.  "Has he any manner?  Is he
+genteel, or a mere country lout?"
+
+"Indeed, he speaks with so much propriety, and has so much modest dignity
+about him, that there's many a rich gentleman who would be proud of such
+a son."
+
+"It is odd," observed Richard, "what a difference there is in families.
+There's Jane, now, who can't read nor write, and was just fit to be a
+workman's wife, had not a thought above her station; and when I think of
+my poor sister Nora--you would not believe it, sir, but she was the most
+elegant creature in the world,--yes, even as a child (she was but a child
+when I went off to America).  And often, as I was getting on in life,
+often I used to say to myself, 'My little Nora shall be a lady after
+all.'  Poor thing--but she died young."  Richard's voice grew husky.
+
+The parson kindly pressed the arm on which he leaned, and said, after a
+pause,--
+
+"Nothing refines us like education, sir.  I believe your sister Nora had
+received much instruction, and had the talents to profit by it: it is the
+same with your nephew."
+
+"I'll see him," said Richard, stamping his foot firmly on the ground,
+"and if I like him, I'll be as good as a father to him.  Look you, Mr.--
+what's your name, sir?"
+
+"Dale."
+
+"Mr. Dale, look you, I'm a single man.  Perhaps I may marry some day;
+perhaps I sha' n't.  I'm not going to throw myself away.  If I can get a
+lady of quality, why--but that's neither here nor there; meanwhile I
+should be glad of a nephew whom I need not be ashamed of.  You see, sir,
+I am a new man, the builder of my own fortunes; and though I have picked
+up a little education--I don't well know how,--as I scramble on still,
+now I come back to the old country, I'm well aware that I 'm not exactly
+a match for those d---d aristocrats; don't show so well in a drawing-room
+as I could wish.  I could be a parliament man if I liked, but I might
+make a goose of myself; so, all things considered, if I can get a sort of
+junior partner to do the polite work, and show off the goods, I think the
+house of Avenel & Co. might become a pretty considerable honour to the
+Britishers.  You understand me, sir?"
+
+"Oh, very well," answered Mr. Dale, smiling, though rather gravely.
+
+"Now," continued the New Man, I'm not ashamed to have risen in life by my
+own merits; and I don't disguise what I've been.  And, when I'm in my own
+grand house, I'm fond of saying, 'I landed at New York with L10 in my
+purse, and here I am!'  But it would not do to have the old folks with
+me.  People take you with all your faults if you're rich; but they won't
+swallow your family into the bargain.  So if I don't have at my house my
+own father and mother, whom I love dearly, and should like to see sitting
+at table, with my servants behind their chairs, I could still less have
+sister Jane.  I recollect her very well, but she can't have got genteeler
+as she's grown older.  Therefore I beg you'll not set her on coming after
+me! it would not do by any manner of means.  Don't say a word about me to
+her.  But send the boy down here to his grandfather, and I'll see him
+quietly, you understand."
+
+"Yes, but it will be hard to separate her from the boy."
+
+"Stuff!  all boys are separated from their parents when they go into the
+world.  So that's settled.  Now, just tell me.  I know the old folks
+always snubbed Jane,--that is, Mother did.  My poor dear father never
+snubbed any of us.  Perhaps Mother has not behaved altogether well to
+Jane.  But we must not blame her for that; you see this is how it
+happened.  There were a good many of us, while Father and Mother kept
+shop in the High Street, so we were all to be provided for anyhow; and
+Jane, being very useful and handy at work, got a place when she was a
+little girl, and had no time for learning.  Afterwards my father made a
+lucky hit, in getting my Lord Lansmere's custom after an election, in
+which he did a great deal for the Blues (for he was a famous
+electioneerer, my poor father).  My Lady stood godmother to Nora; and
+then all my brothers, and two of my sisters, died off, and Father retired
+from business; and when he took Jane from service, she was so common-like
+that Mother could not help contrasting her with Nora.  You see Jane was
+their child when they were poor little shop-people, with their heads
+scarce above water; and Nora was their child when they were well off, and
+had retired from trade, and lived genteel: so that makes a great
+difference.  And Mother did not quite look on her as on her own child.
+But it was Jane's own fault: for Mother would have made it up with her if
+she had married the son of our neighbour the great linen-draper, as she
+might have done; but she would take Mark Fairfield, a common carpenter.
+Parents like best those of their children who succeed best in life.
+Natural.  Why, they did not care for me till I came back the man I am.
+But to return to Jane: I'm afraid they've neglected her.  How is she
+off?"
+
+"She earns her livelihood, and is poor, but contented."
+
+"Ah, just be good enough to give her this" (and Richard took a bank-note
+of L50 from his pocket-book).
+
+"You can say the  old  folks  sent  it to her;  or that it is a present
+from Dick, without telling her he has come back from America."
+
+"My dear sir," said the parson, "I am more and more thankful to have made
+your acquaintance.  This is a very liberal gift of yours; but your best
+plan will be to send it through your mother.  For, though I don't want to
+betray any confidence you place in me, I should not know what to answer
+if Mrs. Fairfield began to question me about her brother.  I never had
+but one secret to keep, and I hope I shall never have another.  A secret
+is very like a lie!"
+
+"You had a secret then?" said Richard, as he took back the bank-note.  He
+had learned, perhaps in America, to be a very inquisitive man.  He added
+point-blank, "Pray, what was it?"
+
+"Why, what it would not be if I told you," said the parson, with a forced
+laugh,--"a secret!"
+
+"Well, I guess we're in a land of liberty.  Do as you like.  Now, I dare
+say you think me a very odd fellow to come out of my shell to you in this
+off-hand way; but I liked the look of you, even when we were at the inn
+together.  And just now I was uncommonly pleased to find that, though you
+are a parson, you don't want to keep a man's nose down to a shopboard, if
+he has anything in him.  You're not one of the aristocrats--"
+
+"Indeed," said the parson, with imprudent warmth, "it is not the
+character of the aristocracy of this country to keep people down.  They
+make way amongst themselves for any man, whatever his birth, who has the
+talent and energy to aspire to their level.  That's the especial boast of
+the British constitution, sir!"
+
+"Oh, you think so, do you?" said Mr. Richard, looking sourly at the
+parson.  "I dare say those are the opinions in which you have brought up
+the lad.  Just keep him yourself and let the aristocracy provide for
+him!"
+
+The parson's generous and patriotic warmth evaporated at once, at this
+sudden inlet of cold air into the conversation.  He perceived that he had
+made a terrible blunder; and as it was not his business at that moment to
+vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he
+abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and
+scandalous abruptness.  Catching at the arm which Mr. Avenel had
+withdrawn from him, he exclaimed,--
+
+"Indeed, sir, you are mistaken; I have never attempted to influence your
+nephew's political opinions.  On the contrary, if, at his age, he can be
+said to have formed any opinions, I am greatly afraid--that is, I think
+his opinions are by no means sound--that is, constitutional.  I mean, I
+mean--" And the poor parson, anxious to select a word that would not
+offend his listener, stopped short in lamentable confusion of idea.
+
+Mr. Avenel enjoyed his distress for a moment, with a saturnine smile, and
+then said,--
+
+"Well, I calculate he's a Radical.  Natural enough, if he has not got a
+sixpence to lose--all come right by and by.  I'm not a Radical,--at least
+not a Destructive--much too clever a man for that, I hope.  But I wish to
+see things very different from what they are.  Don't fancy that I want
+the common people, who've got nothing, to pretend to dictate to their
+betters, because I hate to see a parcel of fellows who are called lords
+and squires trying to rule the roast.  I think, sir, that it is men like
+me who ought to be at the top of the tree! and that's the long and the
+short of it.  What do you say?"
+
+"I've not the least objection," said the crestfallen parson, basely.
+But, to do him justice, I must add that he did not the least know what he
+was saying!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Unconscious of the change in his fate which the diplomacy of the parson
+sought to effect, Leonard Fairfield was enjoying the first virgin
+sweetness of fame; for the principal town in his neighbourhood had
+followed the then growing fashion of the age, and set up a Mechanics'
+Institute, and some worthy persons interested in the formation of that
+provincial Athenaeum had offered a prize for the best Essay on the
+Diffusion of Knowledge,--a very trite subject, on which persons seem to
+think they can never say too much, and on which there is, nevertheless, a
+great deal yet to be said.  This prize Leonard Fairfield had recently
+won.  His Essay had been publicly complimented by a full meeting of the
+Institute; it had been printed at the expense of the Society, and had
+been rewarded by a silver medal,--delineative of Apollo crowning Merit
+(poor Merit had not a rag to his back; but Merit, left only to the care
+of Apollo, never is too good a customer to the tailor!)  And the County
+Gazette had declared that Britain had produced another prodigy in the
+person of Dr. Riccabocca's self-educated gardener.
+
+Attention was now directed to Leonard's mechanical contrivances.  The
+squire, ever eagerly bent on improvements, had brought an engineer to
+inspect the lad's system of irrigation, and the engineer had been greatly
+struck by the simple means by which a very considerable technical
+difficulty had been overcome.  The neighbouring farmers now called
+Leonard "Mr. Fairfield," and invited him on equal terms to their houses.
+Mr. Stirn had met him on the high road, touched his hat, and hoped that
+"he bore no malice."  All this, I say, was the first sweetness of fame;
+and if Leonard Fairfield comes to be a great man, he will never find such
+sweets in the after fruit.  It was this success which had determined the
+parson on the step which he had just taken, and which he had long before
+anxiously meditated.  For, during the last year or so, he had renewed his
+old intimacy with the widow and the boy; and he had noticed, with great
+hope and great fear, the rapid growth of an intellect, which now stood
+out from the lowly circumstances that surrounded it in bold and
+unharmonizing relief.
+
+It was the evening after his return home that the parson strolled up to
+the Casino.  He put Leonard Fairfield's Prize Essay in his pocket; for he
+felt that he could not let the young man go forth into the world without
+a preparatory lecture, and he intended to scourge poor Merit with the
+very laurel wreath which it had received from Apollo.  But in this he
+wanted Riccabocca's assistance; or rather he feared that, if he did not
+get the philosopher on his side, the philosopher might undo all the work
+of the parson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A sweet sound came through the orange boughs, and floated to the ears of
+the parson, as he wound slowly up the gentle ascent,--so sweet, so
+silvery, he paused in delight--unaware, wretched man! that he was thereby
+conniving at Papistical errors.  Soft it came and sweet; softer and
+sweeter,--"Ave Maria!" Violante was chanting the evening hymn to the
+Virgin Mother.  The parson at last distinguished the sense of the words,
+and shook his head with the pious shake of an orthodox Protestant.  He
+broke from the spell resolutely, and walked on with a sturdy step.
+Gaining the terrace, he found the little family seated under an awning,--
+Mrs. Riccabocca knitting; the signor with his arms folded on his breast:
+the book he had been reading a few moments before had fallen on the
+ground, and his dark eyes were soft and dreamy.  Violante had finished
+her hymn, and seated herself on the ground between the two, pillowing her
+head on her stepmother's lap, but with her hand resting on her father's
+knee, and her gaze fixed fondly on his face.
+
+"Good-evening," said Mr. Dale.  Violante stole up to him, and, pulling
+him so as to bring his ear nearer to her lip, whispered, "Talk to Papa,
+do,--and cheerfully; he is sad."
+
+She escaped from him as she said this, and appeared to busy herself with
+watering the flowers arranged on stands round the awning.  But she kept
+her swimming lustrous eyes wistfully on her father.
+
+"How fares it with you, my dear friend?" said the parson, kindly, as he
+rested his hand on the Italian's shoulder.  "You must not let him get out
+of spirits, Mrs. Riccabocca."
+
+"I am very ungrateful to her if I ever am so," said the poor Italian,
+with all his natural gallantry.  Many a good wife, who thinks it is a
+reproach to her if her husband is ever "out of spirits," might have
+turned peevishly from that speech, more elegant than sincere, and so have
+made bad worse; but Mrs. Riccabocca took her husband's proffered hand
+affectionately, and said with great /naivete/,--
+
+"You see I am so stupid, Mr. Dale; I never knew I was so stupid till I
+married.  But I am very glad you are come.  You can get on some learned
+subject together, and then he will not miss so much his--"
+
+"His what?" asked Riccabocca, inquisitively.
+
+"His country.  Do you think that I cannot sometimes read your thoughts?"
+
+"Very often.  But you did not read them just then.  The tongue touches
+where the tooth aches, but the best dentist cannot guess at the tooth
+unless one open one's mouth.--Basta!  Can we offer you some wine of our
+own making, Mr. Dale?--it is pure."
+
+"I 'd rather have some tea," quoth the parson, hastily.  Mrs. Riccabocca,
+too pleased to be in her natural element of domestic use, hurried into
+the house to prepare our national beverage.  And the parson, sliding into
+her chair, said,--
+
+"But you are dejected then?  Fie!  If there's a virtue in the world at
+which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness."
+
+"I don't dispute it," said Riccabocca, with a heavy sigh.  "But though it
+is said by some Greek, who, I think, is quoted by your favourite Seneca,
+that a wise man carries his country with him at the soles of his feet, he
+can't carry also the sunshine over his head."
+
+"I tell you what it is," said the parson, bluntly; "you would have a much
+keener sense of happiness if you had much less esteem for philosophy."
+
+"/Cospetto!/"  said  the  doctor,  rousing  himself.  "Just explain, will
+you?"
+
+"Does not the search after wisdom induce desires not satisfied in this
+small circle to which your life is confined?  It is not so much your
+country for which you yearn, as it is for space to your intellect,
+employment for your thoughts, career for your aspirations."
+
+"You have guessed at the tooth which aches," said Riccabocca, with
+admiration.
+
+"Easy to do that," answered the parson.  "Our wisdom teeth come last and
+give us the most pain; and if you would just starve the mind a little,
+and nourish the heart more, you would be less of a philosopher and more
+of a--"  The parson had the word "Christian" at the tip of his tongue;
+he suppressed a word that, so spoken, would have been exceedingly
+irritating, and substituted, with elegant antithesis, "and more of a
+happy man!"
+
+"I do all I can with my heart," quoth the doctor.
+
+"Not you!  For a man with such a heart as yours should never feel the
+want of the sunshine.  My friend, we live in an age of over mental
+cultivation.  We neglect too much the simple healthful outer life, in
+which there is so much positive joy.  In turning to the world within us,
+we grow blind to this beautiful world without; in studying ourselves as
+men, we almost forget to look up to heaven, and warm to the smile of
+God."
+
+The philosopher mechanically shrugged his shoulders, as he always did
+when another man moralized,--especially if the moralizer were a priest;
+but there was no irony in his smile, as he answered thoughtfully,--
+
+"There is some truth in what you say.  I own that we live too much as if
+we were all brain.  Knowledge has its penalties and pains, as well as its
+prizes."
+
+"That is just what I want you to say to Leonard."
+
+"How have you settled the object of your journey?"
+
+"I will tell you as we walk down to him after tea.  At present, I am
+rather too much occupied with you."
+
+"Me?  The tree is formed--try only to bend the young twig!"
+
+"Trees are trees, and twigs twigs," said the parson, dogmatically; "but
+man is always growing till he falls into the grave.  I think I have heard
+you say that you once had a narrow escape of a prison?"
+
+"Very narrow."
+
+"Just suppose that you were now in that prison, and that a fairy conjured
+up the prospect of this quiet home in a safe land; that you saw the
+orange-trees in flower, felt the evening breeze on your cheek; beheld
+your child gay or sad, as you smiled or knit your brow; that within this
+phantom home was a woman, not, indeed, all your young romance might have
+dreamed of, but faithful and true, every beat of her heart all your own,
+--would you not cry from the depth of your dungeon, 'O fairy!  such a
+change were a paradise!'  Ungrateful man! you want interchange for your
+mind, and your heart should suffice for all!"
+
+Riccabocca was touched and silent.
+
+"Come hither, my child," said Mr. Dale, turning round to Violante, who
+stood still among the flowers, out of hearing, but with watchful eyes.
+"Come hither," he said, opening his arms.
+
+Violante bounded forward, and nestled to the good man's heart.
+
+"Tell me, Violante, when you are alone in the fields or the garden, and
+have left your father looking pleased and serene, so that you have no
+care for him at your heart,--tell me, Violante, though you are all alone,
+with the flowers below, and the birds singing overhead, do you feel that
+life itself is happiness or sorrow?"
+
+"Happiness!" answered Violante, half shutting her eyes, and in a measured
+voice.
+
+"Can you explain what kind of happiness it is?"
+
+"Oh, no, impossible! and it is never the same.  Sometimes it is so still
+--so still, and sometimes so joyous, that I long for wings to fly up to
+God, and thank Him!"
+
+"O friend," said the parson, "this is the true sympathy between life and
+nature, and thus we should feel ever, did we take more care to preserve
+the health and innocence of a child.  We are told that we must become as
+children to enter into the kingdom of Heaven; methinks we should also
+become as children to know what delight there is in our heritage of
+earth!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The maid-servant (for Jackeymo was in the fields) brought the table under
+the awning, and with the English luxury of tea, there were other drinks
+as cheap and as grateful on summer evenings,--drinks which Jackeymo had
+retained and taught from the customs of the South,--unebriate liquors,
+pressed from cooling fruits, sweetened with honey, and deliciously iced:
+ice should cost nothing in a country in which one is frozen up half the
+year!  And Jackeymo, too, had added to our good, solid, heavy English
+bread preparations of wheat much lighter, and more propitious to
+digestion,--with those crisp grissins, which seem to enjoy being eaten,
+they make so pleasant a noise between one's teeth.
+
+The parson esteemed it a little treat to drink tea with the Riccaboccas.
+There was something of elegance and grace in that homely meal at the poor
+exile's table, which pleased the eye as well as taste.  And the very
+utensils, plain Wedgwood though they were, had a classical simplicity,
+which made Mrs. Hazeldean's old India delf, and Mrs. Dale's best
+Worcester china, look tawdry and barbarous in comparison.  For it was
+Flaxman who gave designs to Wedgwood, and the most truly refined of all
+our manufactures in porcelain (if we do not look to the mere material) is
+in the reach of the most thrifty.
+
+The little banquet was at first rather a silent one; but Riccabocca threw
+off his gloom, and became gay and animated.  Then poor Mrs. Riccabocca
+smiled, and pressed the grissins; and Violante, forgetting all her
+stateliness, laughed and played tricks on the parson, stealing away his
+cup of warm tea when his head was turned, and substituting iced cherry-
+juice.  Then the parson got up and ran after Violante, making angry
+faces, and Violante dodged beautifully, till the parson, fairly tired
+out, was too glad to cry "Peace," and come back to the cherry-juice.
+Thus time rolled on, till they heard afar the stroke of the distant
+church-clock, and Mr. Dale started up and cried, "But we shall be too
+late for Leonard.  Come, naughty little girl, get your father his hat."
+
+"And umbrella!" said Riccabocca, looking up at the cloudless, moonlit
+sky.
+
+"Umbrella against the stars?" asked the parson, laughing.  "The stars are
+no friends of mine," said Riccabocca, "and one never knows what may
+happen!"
+
+The philosopher and the parson walked on amicably.
+
+"You have done me good," said Riccabocca, "but I hope I am not always so
+unreasonably melancholic as you seem to suspect.  The evenings will
+sometimes appear long, and dull too, to a man whose thoughts on the past
+are almost his sole companions."
+
+"Sole companions?--your child?"
+
+"She is so young."
+
+"Your wife?"
+
+"She is so--" the bland Italian appeared to check some disparaging
+adjective, and mildly added, "so good, I allow; but you must own that she
+and I cannot have much in common."
+
+"I own nothing of the sort.  You have your house and your interests, your
+happiness and your lives, in common.  We men are so exacting, we expect
+to find ideal nymphs and goddesses when we condescend to marry a mortal;
+and if we did, our chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come
+up as cold as a stone."
+
+"Per Bacco, you are an oracle," said Riccabocca, laughing.  "But I am not
+so sceptical as you are.  I honour the fair sex too much.  There are a
+great many women who realize the ideal of men, to be found in--the
+poets!"
+
+"There's my dear Mrs. Dale," resumed the parson, not heeding the
+sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice into a whisper,
+and looking round cautiously,--"there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best woman
+in the world,--an angel I would say, if the word were not profane; BUT--"
+
+"What's the BUT?" asked the doctor, demurely.
+
+"BUT I too might say that 'she and I have not much in common,' if I were
+only to compare mind to mind, and when my poor Carry says something less
+profound than Madame de Stael might have said, smile on her in contempt
+from the elevation of logic and Latin.  Yet when I remember all the
+little sorrows and joys that we have shared together, and feel how
+solitary I should have been without her--oh, then, I am instantly aware
+that there is between us in common something infinitely closer and better
+than if the same course of study had given us the same equality of ideas;
+and I was forced to brace myself for a combat of intellect, as I am when
+I fall in with a tiresome sage like yourself.  I don't pretend to say
+that Mrs. Riccabocca is a Mrs. Dale," added the parson, with lofty
+candour,--"there is but one Mrs. Dale in the world; but still, you have
+drawn a prize in the wheel matrimonial!  Think of Socrates, and yet he
+was content even with his--Xantippe!"
+
+Dr. Riccabocca called to mind Mrs. Dale's "little tempers," and inly
+rejoiced that no second Mrs. Dale had existed to fall to his own lot.
+His placid Jemima gained by the contrast.  Nevertheless he had the ill
+grace to reply, "Socrates was a man beyond all imitation!--Yet I believe
+that even he spent very few of his evenings at home.  But /revenons a nos
+moutons/, we are nearly at Mrs. Fairfield's cottage, and you have not yet
+told me what you have settled as to Leonard."
+
+The parson halted, took Riccabocca by the button, and informed him, in
+very few words, that Leonard was to go to Lansmere to see some relations
+there, who had the fortune, if they had the will, to give full career to
+his abilities.
+
+"The great thing, in the mean while," said the parson, "would be to
+enlighten him a little as to what he calls--enlightenment."
+
+"Ah!" said Riccabocca, diverted, and rubbing his hands, "I shall listen
+with interest to what you say on that subject."
+
+"And must aid me: for the first step in this modern march of
+enlightenment is to leave the poor parson behind; and if one calls out
+'Hold! and look at the sign-post,' the traveller hurries on the faster,
+saying to himself, 'Pooh, pooh!--that is only the cry of the parson!'
+But my gentleman, when he doubts me, will listen to you,--you're a
+philosopher!"
+
+"We philosophers are of some use now and then, even to parsons!"
+
+"If you were not so conceited a set of deluded poor creatures already,
+I would say 'Yes,'" replied the parson, generously; and, taking hold of
+Riccabocca's umbrella, he applied the brass handle thereof, by way of a
+knocker, to the cottage door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Certainly it is a glorious fever,--that desire To Know!  And there are
+few sights in the moral world more sublime than that which many a garret
+might afford, if Asmodeus would bare the roofs to our survey,--namely, a
+brave, patient, earnest human being toiling his own arduous way, athwart
+the iron walls of penury, into the magnificent Infinite, which is
+luminous with starry souls.
+
+So there sits Leonard the Self-taught in the little cottage alone: for,
+though scarcely past the hour in which great folks dine, it is the hour
+in which small folks go to bed, and Mrs. Fairfield has retired to rest,
+while Leonard has settled to his books.
+
+He had placed his table under the lattice, and from time to time he
+looked up and enjoyed the stillness of the moon.  Well for him that, in
+reparation for those hours stolen from night, the hardy physical labour
+commenced with dawn.  Students would not be the sad dyspeptics they are,
+if they worked as many hours in the open air as my scholar-peasant.  But
+even in him you could see that the mind had begun a little to affect the
+frame.  They who task the intellect must pay the penalty with the body.
+Ill, believe me, would this work-day world get on if all within it were
+hard-reading, studious animals, playing the deuce with the ganglionic
+apparatus.
+
+Leonard started as he heard the knock at the door; the parson's well-
+known voice reassured him.  In some surprise he admitted his visitors.
+
+"We are come to talk to you, Leonard," said Mr. Dale; "but I fear we
+shall disturb Mrs. Fairfield."
+
+"Oh, no, sir! the door to the staircase is shut, and she sleeps soundly."
+
+"Why, this is a French book!  Do you read French, Leonard?" asked
+Riccabocca.
+
+"I have not found French difficult, sir.  Once over the grammar, and the
+language is so clear; it seems the very language for reasoning."
+
+"True.  Voltaire said justly, 'Whatever is obscure is not French,'"
+observed Riccabocca.
+
+"I wish I could say the same of English," muttered the parson.
+
+"But what is this,--Latin too?--Virgil?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  But I find I make little way there without a master.  I fear
+I must give it up" (and Leonard sighed).
+
+The two gentlemen exchanged looks, and seated themselves.  The young
+peasant remained standing modestly, and in his air and mien there was
+something that touched the heart while it pleased the eye.  He was no
+longer the timid boy who had shrunk from the frown of Mr. Stirn, nor that
+rude personation of simple physical strength, roused to undisciplined
+bravery, which had received its downfall on the village green of
+Hazeldean.  The power of thought was on his brow,--somewhat unquiet
+still, but mild and earnest.  The features had attained that refinement
+which is often attributed to race, but comes, in truth, from elegance of
+idea, whether caught from our parents or learned from books.  In his rich
+brown hair, thrown carelessly from his temples, and curling almost to the
+shoulders; in his large blue eye, which was deepened to the hue of the
+violet by the long dark lash; in that firmness of lip, which comes from
+the grapple with difficulties, there was considerable beauty, but no
+longer the beauty of the mere peasant.  And yet there was still about the
+whole countenance that expression of goodness and purity which a painter
+would give to his ideal of the peasant lover,--such as Tasso would have
+placed in the "Aminta," or Fletcher have admitted to the side of the
+Faithful Shepherdess.
+
+"You must draw a chair here, and sit down between us, Leonard," said the
+parson.
+
+"If any one," said Riccabocca, "has a right to sit, it is the one who is
+to hear the sermon; and if any one ought to stand, it is the one who is
+about to preach it."
+
+"Don't be frightened, Leonard," said the parson, graciously; "it is only
+a criticism, not a sermon;" and he pulled out Leonard's Prize Essay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+PARSON.--"You take for your motto this aphorism, 'Knowledge is Power.'
+--BACON."
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Bacon make such an aphorism!  The last man in the world to
+have said anything so pert and so shallow!"
+
+LEONARD (astonished).--"Do you mean to say, sir, that that aphorism is
+not in Lord Bacon?  Why, I have seen it quoted as his in almost every
+newspaper, and in almost every speech in favour of popular education."
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Then that should be a warning to you never again to fall
+into the error of the would-be scholar,--
+
+     [This aphorism has been probably assigned to Lord Bacon upon the
+     mere authority of the index to his works.  It is the aphorism of the
+     index-maker, certainly not of the great master of inductive
+     philosophy.  Bacon has, it is true, repeatedly dwelt on the power of
+     knowledge, but with so many explanations and distinctions that
+     nothing could be more unjust to his general meaning than the attempt
+     to cramp into a sentence what it costs him a volume to define.
+     Thus, if on one page he appears to confound knowledge with power, in
+     another he sets them in the strongest antithesis to each other; as
+     follows "Adeo signanter Deus opera potentix et sapientive
+     discriminavit."  But it would be as unfair to Bacon to convert into
+     an aphorism the sentence that discriminates between knowledge and
+     power as it is to convert into an aphorism any sentence that
+     confounds them.]
+
+namely, quote second-hand.  Lord Bacon wrote a great book to show in what
+knowledge is power, how that power should be defined, in what it might be
+mistaken.  And, pray, do you think so sensible a man ever would have
+taken the trouble to write a great book upon the subject, if he could
+have packed up all he had to say into the portable dogma, 'Knowledge is
+power'?  Pooh! no such aphorism is to be found in Bacon from the first
+page of his writings to the last."
+
+PARSON (candidly).--"Well,  I  supposed  it was  Lord Bacon's, and I am
+very glad to hear that the aphorism has not the sanction of his
+authority."
+
+LEONARD (recovering his surprise).--"But why so?"
+
+PARSON.--"Because it either says a great deal too much, or just--nothing
+at all."
+
+LEONARD.--"At least, sir, it seems to me undeniable."
+
+PARSON.--"Well, grant that it is undeniable.  Does it prove much in
+favour of knowledge?  Pray, is not ignorance power too?"
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"And a power that has had much the best end of the quarter-
+staff."
+
+PARSON.--"All evil is power, and does its power make it anything the
+better?"
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Fanaticism is power,--and a power that has often swept away
+knowledge like a whirlwind.  The Mussulman burns the library of a world,
+and forces the Koran and the sword from the schools of Byzantium to the
+colleges of Hindostan."
+
+PARSON (bearing on with a new column of illustration).--"Hunger is power.
+The barbarians, starved out of their forests by their own swarming
+population, swept into Italy and annihilated letters.  The Romans,
+however degraded, had more knowledge at least than the Gaul and the
+Visigoth."
+
+RICCABOCCA (bringing up the reserve).--"And even in Greece, when Greek
+met Greek, the Athenians--our masters in all knowledge--were beat by the
+Spartans, who held learning in contempt."
+
+PARSON.--"Wherefore you see,  Leonard, that though knowledge be power, it
+is only one of the powers of the world; that there are others as strong,
+and often much stronger; and the assertion either means but a barren
+truism, not worth so frequent a repetition, or it means something that
+you would find it very difficult to prove."
+
+LEONARD.---"One  nation may be beaten by another that has more physical
+strength and more military discipline; which last, permit me to say, sir,
+is a species of knowledge--"
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Yes; but your knowledge-mongers at present call upon us to
+discard military discipline, and the qualities that produce it, from the
+list of the useful arts.  And in your own Essay, you insist upon
+knowledge as the great disbander of armies, and the foe of all military
+discipline!"
+
+PARSON.--"Let the young man proceed.  Nations, you say, may be beaten by
+other nations less learned and civilized?"
+
+LEONARD.--"But knowledge elevates a class.  I invite the members of my
+own humble order to knowledge, because knowledge will lift them into
+power."
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"What do you say to that, Mr. Dale?"
+
+PARSON.--"In the first place, is it true that the class which has the
+most knowledge gets the most power?  I suppose philosophers, like my
+friend Dr. Riccabocca, think they have the most knowledge.  And pray, in
+what age have philosophers governed the world?  Are they not always
+grumbling that nobody attends to them?"
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Per Bacco, if people had attended to us, it would have been
+a droll sort of world by this time!"
+
+PARSON.--"Very likely.  But, as a general rule, those have the most
+knowledge who give themselves up to it the most.  Let us put out of the
+question philosophers (who are often but ingenious lunatics), and speak
+only of erudite scholars, men of letters and practical science,
+professors, tutors, and fellows of colleges.  I fancy any member of
+parliament would tell us that there is no class of men which has less
+actual influence on public affairs.  These scholars have more knowledge
+than manufacturers and shipowners, squires and farmers; but do you find
+that they have more power over the Government and the votes of the House
+of Parliament?"
+
+"They ought to have," said Leonard.
+
+"Ought they?" said the parson; "we'll consider that later.  Meanwhile,
+you must not escape from your own proposition, which is, that knowledge
+is power,--not that it ought to be.  Now, even granting your corollary,
+that the power of a class is therefore proportioned to its knowledge,
+pray, do you suppose that while your order, the operatives, are
+instructing themselves, all the rest of the community are to be at a
+standstill?  Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce
+equality of knowledge.  Those who have most leisure, application, and
+aptitude for learning will still know the most.  Nay, by a very natural
+law, the more general the appetite for knowledge, the more the increased
+competition will favour those most adapted to excel by circumstance and
+nature.  At this day, there is a vast increase of knowledge spread over
+all society, compared with that in the Middle Ages; but is there not a
+still greater distinction between the highly educated gentleman and the
+intelligent mechanic, than there was then between the baron who could not
+sign his name and the churl at the plough; between the accomplished
+statesman, versed in all historical lore, and the voter whose politics
+are formed by his newspaper, than there was between the legislator who
+passed laws against witches and the burgher who defended his guild from
+some feudal aggression; between the enlightened scholar and the dunce of
+to-day, than there was between the monkish alchemist and the blockhead of
+yesterday?  Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no doubt wiser
+than the churl, burgher, and blockhead of the twelfth.  But the
+gentleman, statesman, and scholar of the present age are at least quite
+as favourable a contrast to the alchemist, witch-burner, and baron of
+old.  As the progress of enlightenment has done hitherto, so will it ever
+do.
+
+"Knowledge is like capital: the more there is in a country, the greater
+the disparities in wealth between one man and another.  Therefore, if the
+working class increase in knowledge, so do the other classes; and if the
+working class rise peaceably and legitimately into power, it is not in
+proportion to their own knowledge alone, but rather according as it seems
+to the knowledge of the other orders of the community, that such
+augmentation of proportional power is just and safe and wise."
+
+Placed between the parson and the philosopher, Leonard felt that his
+position was not favourable to the display of his forces.  Insensibly he
+edged his chair somewhat away, and said mournfully,--
+
+"Then, according to you, the reign of knowledge would be no great advance
+in the aggregate freedom and welfare of man?"
+
+PARSON.--"Let us define.  By knowledge, do you mean intellectual
+cultivation; by the reign of knowledge, the ascendency of the most
+cultivated minds?"
+
+LEONARD (after a pause).--"Yes."
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Oh, indiscreet young man! that is an unfortunate concession
+of yours; for the ascendency of the most cultivated minds would be a
+terrible oligarchy!"
+
+PARSON.--"Perfectly true; and we now reply to your assertion that men
+who, by profession, have most learning, ought to have more influence than
+squires and merchants, farmers and mechanics.  Observe, all the knowledge
+that we mortals can acquire is not knowledge positive and perfect, but
+knowledge comparative, and subject to the errors and passions of
+humanity.  And suppose that you could establish, as the sole regulators
+of affairs, those who had the most mental cultivation, do you think they
+would not like that power well enough to take all means which their
+superior intelligence could devise to keep it to themselves?  The
+experiment was tried of old by the priests of Egypt; and in the empire of
+China, at this day, the aristocracy are elected from those who have most
+distinguished themselves in learned colleges.  If I may call myself a
+member of that body, 'the people,' I would rather be an Englishman,
+however much displeased with dull ministers and blundering parliaments,
+than I would be a Chinese under the rule of the picked sages of the
+Celestial Empire.  Happily, therefore, my dear Leonard, nations are
+governed by many things besides what is commonly called knowledge; and
+the greatest practical ministers, who, like Themistocles, have made small
+States great, and the most dominant races, who, like the Romans, have
+stretched their rule from a village half over the universe, have been
+distinguished by various qualities which a philosopher would sneer at,
+and a knowledge-monger would call 'sad prejudices' and 'lamentable errors
+of reason.'"
+
+LEONARD (bitterly).--"Sir, you make use of knowledge itself to argue
+against knowledge."
+
+PARSON.--"I make use of the little I know to prove the foolishness of
+idolatry.  I do not argue against knowledge; I argue against knowledge-
+worship.  For here, I see in your Essay, that you are not contented with
+raising human knowledge into something like divine omnipotence,--you must
+also confound her with virtue.  According to you, it is but to diffuse
+the intelligence of the few among the many, and all at which we preachers
+aim is accomplished.  Nay, more; for, whereas we humble preachers have
+never presumed to say, with the heathen Stoic, that even virtue is sure
+of happiness below (though it be the best road to it), you tell us
+plainly that this knowledge of yours gives not only the virtue of a
+saint, but bestows the bliss of a god.  Before the steps of your idol,
+the evils of life disappear.  To hear you, one has but 'to know,' in
+order to be exempt from the sins and sorrows of the ignorant.  Has it
+ever been so?  Grant that you diffuse amongst the many all the knowledge
+ever attained by the few.  Have the wise few been so unerring and so
+happy?  You supposed that your motto was accurately cited from Bacon.
+What was Bacon himself?  The poet tells you
+
+          "'The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind!'
+
+"Can you hope to bestow upon the vast mass of your order the luminous
+intelligence of this 'Lord Chancellor of Nature'?  Grant that you do so,
+and what guarantee have you for the virtue and the happiness which you
+assume as the concomitants of the gift?  See Bacon himself: what black
+ingratitude! what miserable self-seeking! what truckling servility! what
+abject and pitiful spirit!  So far from intellectual knowledge, in its
+highest form and type, insuring virtue and bliss, it is by no means
+uncommon to find great mental cultivation combined with great moral
+corruption."  (Aside to Riccabocca.--"Push on, will you?")
+
+RICCASOCCA.--"A combination remarkable in eras as in individuals.
+Petronius shows us a state of morals at which a commonplace devil would
+blush, in the midst of a society more intellectually cultivated than
+certainly was that which produced Regulus or the Horatii.  And the most
+learned eras in modern Italy were precisely those which brought the vices
+into the most ghastly refinement."
+
+LEONARD (rising in great agitation, and clasping his hands).--"I cannot
+contend with you, who produce against information so slender and crude as
+mine the stores which have been locked from my reach; but I feel that
+there must be another side to this shield,--a shield that you will not
+even allow to be silver.  And, oh, if you thus speak of knowledge, why
+have you encouraged me to know?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+"Ah, my son!" said the parson, "if I wished to prove the value of
+religion, would you think I served it much if I took as my motto,
+'Religion is power'?  Would not that be a base and sordid view of its
+advantages?  And would you not say, He who regards religion as a power
+intends to abuse it as a priestcraft?"
+
+"Well put!" said Riccabocca.
+
+"Wait a moment--let me think!  Ah, I see, Sir!" said Leonard.
+
+PARSON.--"If the cause be holy, do not weigh it in the scales of the
+market; if its objects be peaceful, do not seek to arm it with the
+weapons of strife; if it is to be the cement of society, do not vaunt it
+as the triumph of class against class."
+
+LEONARD (ingenuously).--"You correct me nobly, sir.  Knowledge is power,
+but not in the sense in which I have interpreted the saying."
+
+PARSON.--"Knowledge is one of the powers in the moral world, but one
+that, in its immediate result, is not always of the most worldly
+advantage to the possessor.  It is one of the slowest, because one of the
+most durable, of agencies.  It may take a thousand years for a thought to
+come into power; and the thinker who originated it might have died in
+rags or in chains."
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Our Italian proverb saith that 'the teacher is like the
+candle, which lights others in consuming itself.'"
+
+PARSON.--"Therefore he who has the true ambition of knowledge should
+entertain it for the power of his idea, not for the power it may bestow
+on himself: it should be lodged in the conscience, and, like the
+conscience, look for no certain reward on this side the grave.  And since
+knowledge is compatible with good and with evil, would not it be better
+to say, 'Knowledge is a trust'?"
+
+"You are right, sir," said Leonard, cheerfully; "pray proceed."
+
+PARSON.--"You ask me why we encourage you to KNOW.  First, because (as
+you say yourself in your Essay) knowledge, irrespective of gain, is in
+itself a delight, and ought to be something far more.  Like liberty, like
+religion, it may be abused; but I have no more right to say that the poor
+shall be ignorant than I have to say that the rich only shall be free,
+and that the clergy alone shall learn the truths of redemption.  You
+truly observe in your treatise that knowledge opens to us other
+excitements than those of the senses, and another life than that of the
+moment.  The difference between us is this,--that you forget that the
+same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains;
+the horny hand of the peasant feels not the nettles which sting the fine
+skin of the scholar.  You forget also, that whatever widens the sphere of
+the desires opens to them also new temptations.  Vanity, the desire of
+applause, pride, the sense of superiority, gnawing discontent where that
+superiority is not recognized, morbid susceptibility, which comes with
+all new feelings, the underrating of simple pleasures apart from the
+intellectual, the chase of the imagination, often unduly stimulated, for
+things unattainable below,--all these are surely amongst the first
+temptations that beset the entrance into knowledge."  Leonard shaded his
+face with his hand.
+
+"Hence," continued the parson, benignantly,--"hence, so far from
+considering that we do all that is needful to accomplish ourselves as
+men, when we cultivate only the intellect, we should remember that we
+thereby continually increase the range of our desires, and therefore of
+our temptations; and we should endeavour, simultaneously, to cultivate
+both those affections of the heart which prove the ignorant to be God's
+children no less than the wise, and those moral qualities which have made
+men great and good when reading and writing were scarcely known: to wit,
+--patience and fortitude under poverty and distress; humility and
+beneficence amidst grandeur and wealth, and, in counteraction to that
+egotism which all superiority, mental or worldly, is apt to inspire,
+Justice, the father of all the more solid virtues, softened by Charity,
+which is their loving mother.  Thus accompanied, knowledge indeed becomes
+the magnificent crown of humanity,--not the imperious despot, but the
+checked and tempered sovereign of the soul."
+
+The parson paused, and Leonard, coming near him, timidly took his hand,
+with a child's affectionate and grateful impulse.
+
+RICCAROCCA.--"And if, Leonard, you are not satisfied with our parson's
+excellent definitions, you have only to read what Lord Bacon himself has
+said upon the true ends of knowledge to comprehend at once how angry the
+poor great man, whom Mr. Dale treats so harshly, would have been with
+those who have stinted his elaborate distinctions and provident cautions
+into that coxcombical little aphorism, and then misconstrued all he
+designed to prove in favour of the commandment, and authority of
+learning.  For," added the sage, looking up as a man does when he is
+tasking his memory, "I think it is thus that after saying the greatest
+error of all is the mistaking or misplacing the end of knowledge, and
+denouncing the various objects for which it is vulgarly sought,--I think
+it is thus that Lord Bacon proceeds: 'Knowledge is not a shop for profit
+or sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the
+relief of men's estate.'"
+
+     ["But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or
+     misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have
+     entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a
+     natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain
+     their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and
+     reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and
+     contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession"--[that is,
+     for most of those objects which are meant by the ordinary titers of
+     the saying, "Knowledge is power"]--"and seldom sincerely to give a
+     true account of these gifts of reason to the benefit and use of men,
+     as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a
+     searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and
+     variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower
+     of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or
+     commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or
+     sale,--and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and
+     the relief of men's estate."--Advancement of Learning, Book I.]
+
+PARSON (remorsefully).--"Are those Lord Bacon's words?  I am very sorry I
+spoke so uncharitably of his life.  I must examine it again.  I may find
+excuses for it now that I could not when I first formed my judgment.
+I was then a raw lad at Oxford.  But I see, Leonard, there is still
+something on your mind."
+
+LEONARD.--"It is true, sir: I would but ask whether it is not by
+knowledge that we arrive at the qualities and virtues you so well
+describe, but which you seem to consider as coming to us through channels
+apart from knowledge?"
+
+PARSON.--"If you mean by the word 'knowledge' something very different
+from what you express in your Essay--and which those contending for
+mental instruction, irrespective of religion and ethics, appear also to
+convey by the word--you are right; but, remember, we have already agreed
+that by the word' knowledge' we mean culture purely intellectual."
+
+LEONARD.--"That is true,--we so understood it."
+
+PARSON.--"Thus, when this great Lord Bacon erred, you may say that he
+erred from want of knowledge,--the knowledge which moralists and
+preachers would convey.  But Lord Bacon had read all that moralists and
+preachers could say on such matters; and he certainly did not err from
+want of intellectual cultivation.  Let me here, my child, invite you to
+observe, that He who knew most of our human hearts and our immortal
+destinies did not insist on this intellectual culture as essential to the
+virtues that form our well-being here, and conduce to our salvation
+hereafter.  Had it been essential, the All-wise One would not have
+selected humble fishermen for the teachers of His doctrine, instead of
+culling His disciples from Roman portico or Athenian academe.  And this,
+which distinguishes so remarkably the Gospel from the ethics of heathen
+philosophy, wherein knowledge is declared to be necessary to virtue, is a
+proof how slight was the heathen sage's insight into the nature of
+mankind, when compared with the Saviour's; for hard indeed would it be to
+men, whether high or low, rich or poor, if science and learning, or
+contemplative philosophy, were the sole avenues to peace and redemption;
+since, in this state of ordeal requiring active duties, very few in any
+age, whether they be high or low, rich or poor, ever are or can be
+devoted to pursuits merely mental.  Christ does not represent Heaven as a
+college for the learned.  Therefore the rules of the Celestial Legislator
+are rendered clear to the simplest understanding as to the deepest."
+
+RICCABOCCA.---"And that which Plato and Zeno, Pythagoras and Socrates
+could not do, was done by men whose ignorance would have been a by-word
+in the schools of the Greek.  The gods of the vulgar were dethroned; the
+face of the world was changed!  This thought may make us allow, indeed,
+that there are agencies more powerful than mere knowledge, and ask, after
+all, what is the mission which knowledge should achieve?"
+
+PARSON.--"The Sacred Book tells us even that; for after establishing the
+truth that, for the multitude, knowledge is not essential to happiness
+and good, it accords still to knowledge its sublime part in the
+revelation prepared and announced.  When an instrument of more than
+ordinary intelligence was required for a purpose divine; when the Gospel,
+recorded by the simple, was to be explained by the acute, enforced by the
+energetic, carried home to the doubts of the Gentile, the Supreme Will
+joined to the zeal of the earlier apostles the learning and genius of
+Saint Paul,--not holier than the others, calling himself the least, yet
+labouring more abundantly than they all, making himself all things unto
+all men, so that some might be saved.  The ignorant may be saved no less
+surely than the wise; but here comes the wise man who helps to save.  And
+how the fulness and animation of this grand Presence, of this indomitable
+Energy, seem to vivify the toil, and to speed the work! 'In journeyings
+often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of mine own
+countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in
+the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils amongst false brethren.'
+Behold, my son!  does not Heaven here seem to reveal the true type of
+Knowledge,--a sleepless activity, a pervading agency, a dauntless
+heroism, an all-supporting faith?--a power, a power indeed; a power apart
+from the aggrandizement of self; a power that brings to him who owns and
+transmits it but 'weariness and painfulness; in watchings often, in
+hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness,'--but a
+power distinct from the mere circumstance of the man, rushing from him as
+rays from the sun; borne through the air, and clothing it with light,
+piercing under earth, and calling forth the harvest.  Worship not
+knowledge, worship not the sun, O my child!  Let the sun but proclaim the
+Creator; let the knowledge but illumine the worship!"
+
+The good man, overcome by his own earnestness, paused; his head drooped
+on the young student's breast, and all three were long silent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Whatever ridicule may be thrown upon Mr. Dale's dissertations by the wit
+of the enlightened, they had a considerable, and I think a beneficial,
+effect upon Leonard Fairfield,--an effect which may perhaps create less
+surprise, when the reader remembers that Leonard was unaccustomed to
+argument, and still retained many of the prejudices natural to his rustic
+breeding.  Nay, he actually thought it possible that, as both Riccabocca
+and Mr. Dale were more than double his age, and had had opportunities not
+only of reading twice as many books, but of gathering up experience in
+wider ranges of life,--he actually, I say, thought it possible that they
+might be better acquainted with the properties and distinctions of
+knowledge than himself.  At all events, the parson's words were so far
+well-timed, that they produced in Leonard very much of that state of mind
+which Mr. Dale desired to effect, before communicating to him the
+startling intelligence that he was to visit relations whom he had never
+seen, of whom he had heard but little, and that it was at least possible
+that the result of that visit might be to open to him greater facilities
+for instruction, and a higher degree in life.
+
+Without some such preparation, I fear that Leonard would have gone forth
+into the world with an exaggerated notion of his own acquirements, and
+with a notion yet more exaggerated as to the kind of power that such
+knowledge as he possessed would obtain for itself.  As it was, when Mr.
+Dale broke to him the news of the experimental journey before him,
+cautioning him against being over sanguine, Leonard received the
+intelligence with a serious meekness, and thoughts that were nobly
+solemn.
+
+When the door closed on his visitors, he remained for some moments
+motionless, and in deep meditation; then he unclosed the door and stole
+forth.  The night was already far advanced, the heavens were luminous
+with all the host of stars.  "I think," said the student, referring, in
+later life, to that crisis in his destiny,--"I think it was then, as I
+stood alone, yet surrounded by worlds so numberless, that I first felt
+the distinction between mind and soul."
+
+"Tell me," said Riccabocca, as he parted company with Mr. Dale, "whether
+you would have given to Frank Hazeldean, on entering life, the same
+lecture on the limits and ends of knowledge which you have bestowed on
+Leonard Fairfield?"
+
+"My friend," quoth the parson, with a touch of human conceit, "I have
+ridden on horseback, and I know that some horses should be guided by the
+bridle, and some should be urged by the spur."
+
+"/Cospetto!/" said Riccabocca, "you contrive to put every experience of
+yours to some use,--even your journey on Mr. Hazeldean's pad.  And I now
+see why, in this little world of a village, you have picked up so general
+an acquaintance with life."
+
+"Did you ever read White's' Natural History of Selborne'?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Do so, and you will find that you need not go far to learn the habits of
+birds, and know the difference between a swallow and a swift.  Learn the
+difference in a village, and you know the difference wherever swallows
+and swifts skim the air."
+
+"Swallows and swifts!--true; but men--"
+
+"Are with us all the year round,--which is more than we can say of
+swallows and swifts."
+
+"Mr. Dale," said Riccabocca, taking off his hat with great formality, "if
+ever again I find myself in a dilemma, I will come to you instead of to
+Machiavelli."
+
+"Ah!" cried the parson, "if I could but have a calm hour's talk with you
+on the errors of the Papal relig--"
+
+Riccabocca was off like a shot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+The next day Mr. Dale had a long conversation with Mrs. Fairfield.  At
+first he found some difficulty in getting over her pride, and inducing
+her to accept overtures from parents who had so long slighted both
+Leonard and herself.  And it would have been in vain to have put before
+the good woman the worldly advantages which such overtures implied.  But
+when Mr. Dale said, almost sternly, "Your parents are old, your father
+infirm; their least wish should be as binding to you as their command,"
+the widow bowed her head, and said,--
+
+"God bless them, sir, I was very sinful 'Honour your father and mother.'
+I'm no schollard, but I know the Commandments.  Let Lenny go.  But he'll
+soon forget me, and mayhap he'll learn to be ashamed of me."
+
+"There I will trust him," said the parson; and he contrived easily to
+reassure and soothe her.
+
+It was not till all this was settled that Mr. Dale drew forth an unsealed
+letter, which Mr. Richard Avenel, taking his hint, had given to him, as
+from Leonard's grandparents, and said, "This is for you, and it contains
+an inclosure of some value."
+
+"Will you read it, sir?  As I said before, I'm no schollard."
+
+"But Leonard is, and he will read it to you."
+
+When Leonard returned home that evening, Mrs. Fairfield showed him the
+letter.  It ran thus:--
+
+     DEAR JANE,--Mr. Dale will tell you that we wish Leonard to come to
+     us.  We are glad to hear you are well.  We forward, by Mr. Dale, a
+     bank-note for L50, which comes from Richard, your brother.  So no
+     more at present from your affectionate parents,
+
+     JOHN AND MARGARET AVENEL.
+
+The letter was in a stiff female scrawl, and Leonard observed that two or
+three mistakes in spelling had been corrected, either in another pen or
+in a different hand.
+
+"Dear brother Dick, how good in him!" cried the widow.  When I saw there
+was money, I thought it must be him.  How I should like to see Dick
+again!  But I s'pose he's still in Amerikay.  Well, well, this will buy
+clothes for you."
+
+"No; you must keep it all, Mother, and put it in the Savings Bank."
+
+"I 'm not quite so silly as that," cried Mrs. Fairfield, with contempt;
+and she put the L50 into a cracked teapot.
+
+"It must not stay there when I 'm gone.  You may be robbed, Mother."
+
+"Dear me, dear me, that's true.  What shall I do with it?  What do I want
+with it, too?  Dear me!  I wish they hadn't sent it.  I sha' n't sleep in
+peace.  You must e'en put it in your own pouch, and button it up tight,
+boy."
+
+Lenny smiled, and took the note; but he took it to Mr. Dale, and begged
+him to put it into the Savings Bank for his mother.
+
+The day following he went to take leave of his master, of Jackeymo, of
+the fountain, the garden.  But after he had gone through the first of
+these adieus with Jackeymo--who, poor man, indulged in all the lively
+gesticulations of grief which make half the eloquence of his countrymen,
+and then, absolutely blubbering, hurried away--Leonard himself was so
+affected that he could not proceed at once to the house, but stood beside
+the fountain, trying hard to keep back his tears.
+
+"You, Leonard--and you are going!" said a soft voice; and the tears fell
+faster than ever, for he recognized the voice of Violante.
+
+"Do not cry," continued the child, with a kind of tender gravity.  "You
+are going, but Papa says it would be selfish in us to grieve, for it is
+for your good; and we should be glad.  But I am selfish, Leonard, and I
+do grieve.  I shall miss you sadly."
+
+"You, young lady,--you miss me?"
+
+"Yes; but I do not cry, Leonard, for I envy you, and I wish I were a boy:
+I wish I could do as you."
+
+The girl clasped her hands, and reared her slight form, with a kind of
+passionate dignity.
+
+"Do as me, and part from all those you love!"
+
+"But to serve those you love.  One day you will come back to your
+mother's cottage, and say, 'I have conquered fortune.'  Oh that I could
+go forth and return, as you will!  But my father has no country, and his
+only child is a useless girl."
+
+As Violante spoke, Leonard had dried his tears: her emotion distracted
+him from his own.
+
+"Oh," continued Violante, again raising her head loftily, "what it is to
+be a man!  A woman sighs, 'I wish,' but a man should say, 'I will.'"
+
+Occasionally before Leonard had noted fitful flashes of a nature grand
+and heroic in the Italian child, especially of late,--flashes the more
+remarkable from the contrast to a form most exquisitely feminine, and to
+a sweetness of temper which made even her pride gentle.  But now it
+seemed as if the child spoke with the command of a queen,--almost with
+the inspiration of a Muse.  A strange and new sense of courage entered
+within him.
+
+"May I remember these words!" he murmured, half audibly.
+
+The girl turned and surveyed him with eyes brighter for their moisture.
+She then extended her hand to him, with a quick movement, and as he bent
+over it, with a grace taught to him by genuine emotion, she said, "And if
+you do, then, girl and child as I am, I shall think I have aided a brave
+heart in the great strife for honour!"
+
+She lingered a moment, smiled as if to herself, and then, gliding away,
+was lost amongst the trees.
+
+After a long pause, in which Leonard recovered slowly from the surprise
+and agitation into which Violante had thrown his spirits--previously
+excited as they were--he went, murmuring to himself, towards the house.
+But Riccabocca was from home.  Leonard turned mechanically to the
+terrace, and busied himself with the flowers; but the dark eyes of
+Violante shone on his thoughts, and her voice rang in his ear.
+
+At length Riccabocca appeared on the road, attended by a labourer, who
+carried something indistinct under his arm.  The Italian beckoned to
+Leonard to follow him into the parlour, and after conversing with him
+kindly, and at some length, and packing up, as it were, a considerable
+provision of wisdom in the portable shape of aphorisms and proverbs, the
+sage left him alone for a few moments.  Riccabocca then returned with his
+wife, and bearing a small knapsack:--
+
+"It is not much we can do for you, Leonard, and money is the worst gift
+in the world for a keepsake; but my wife and I have put our heads
+together to furnish you with a little outfit.  Giacomo, who was in our
+secret, assures us that the clothes will fit; and stole, I fancy, a coat
+of yours, to have the right measure.  Put them on when you go to your
+relations: it is astonishing what a difference it makes in the ideas
+people form of us, according as our coats are cut one way or another.
+I should not be presentable in London thus; and nothing is more true than
+that a tailor is often the making of a man."
+
+"The shirts, too, are very good holland," said Mrs. Riccabocca, about to
+open the knapsack.
+
+"Never mind details, my dear," cried the wise man; "shirts are
+comprehended in the general principle of clothes.  And, Leonard, as a
+remembrance somewhat more personal, accept this, which I have worn many a
+year when time was a thing of importance to me, and nobler fates than
+mine hung on a moment.  We missed the moment, or abused it; and here I am
+a waif on a foreign shore.  Methinks I have done with Time."
+
+The exile, as he thus spoke, placed in Leonard's reluctant hands a watch
+that would have delighted an antiquary, and shocked a dandy.  It was
+exceedingly thick, having an outer case of enamel and an inner one of
+gold.  The hands and the figures of the hours had originally been formed
+of brilliants; but the brilliants had long since vanished.  Still, even
+thus bereft, the watch was much more in character with the giver than the
+receiver, and was as little suited to Leonard as would have been the red
+silk umbrella.
+
+"It is old-fashioned," said Mrs. Riccabocca; "but it goes better than any
+clock in the county.  I really think it will last to the end of the
+world."
+
+"/Carissima mia!/" cried the doctor, "I thought I had convinced you that
+the world is by no means come to its last legs."
+
+"Oh, I did not mean anything, Alphonso," said Mrs. Riccabocca, colouring.
+
+"And that is all we do mean when we talk about that of which we can know
+nothing," said the doctor, less gallantly than usual, for he resented
+that epithet of "old-fashioned," as applied to the watch.
+
+Leonard, we see, had been silent all this time; he could not speak,--
+literally and truly, he could not speak.  How he got out of his
+embarrassment and how he got out of the room, he never explained to my
+satisfaction.  But a few minutes afterwards, he was seen hurrying down
+the road very briskly.
+
+Riccabocca and his wife stood at the window gazing after him.
+
+"There is a depth in that boy's heart," said the sage, "which might float
+an argosy."
+
+"Poor dear boy!  I think we have put everything into the knapsack that he
+can possibly want," said good Mrs. Riccabocca, musingly.
+
+THE DOCTOR (continuing his soliloquy).--"They are strong, but they are
+not immediately apparent."
+
+MRS. RICCABOCCA (resuming hers).--"They are at the bottom of the
+knapsack."
+
+THE DOCTOR.--"They will stand long wear and tear."
+
+MRS. RICCABOCCA.--"A year, at least, with proper care at the wash."
+
+THE DOCTOR (startled).--"Care at the wash!  What on earth are you talking
+of, ma'am?"
+
+MRS. RICCABOCCA (mildly).--"The shirts, to be sure, my love!  And you?"
+
+THE DOCTOR (with a heavy sigh).--"The feelings, ma'am!"  Then, after a
+pause, taking his wife's hand affectionately, "But you did quite right to
+think of the shirts: Mr. Dale said very truly--"
+
+MRS. RICCABOCCA.--"What?"
+
+THE DOCTOR.--"That there was a great deal in common between us--even when
+I think of feelings, and you but of--shirts!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Avenel sat within the parlour, Mr. Richard stood on the
+hearthrug, whistling "Yankee Doodle."  "The parson writes word that the
+lad will come to-day," said Richard, suddenly; "let me see the letter,--
+ay, to-day.  If he took the coach as far as -------, he might walk the
+rest of the way in two or three hours.  He should be pretty nearly
+here.  I have a great mind to go and meet him: it will save his asking
+questions, and hearing about me.  I can clear the town by the back way,
+and get out at the high road."
+
+"You'll not know him from any one else," said Mrs. Avenel.
+
+"Well, that is a good one!  Not know an Avenel!  We've all the same cut
+of the jib,--have we not, Father?"
+
+Poor John laughed heartily, till the tears rolled down his cheeks.
+
+"We were always a well-favoured fam'ly," said John, recomposing himself.
+"There was Luke, but he's gone; and Harry, but he's dead too; and Dick,
+but he's in Amerikay--no, he's here; and my darling Nora, but--"
+
+"Hush!" interrupted Mrs. Avenel; "hush, John!"
+
+The old man stared at her, and then put his tremulous hand to his brow.
+"And Nora's gone too!" said he, in a voice of profound woe.  Both hands
+then fell on his knees, and his head drooped on his breast.
+
+Mrs. Avenel rose, kissed her husband on the forehead, and walked away to
+the window.  Richard took up his hat and brushed the nap carefully with
+his handkerchief; but his lips quivered.
+
+"I 'm going," said he, abruptly.  "Now mind, Mother, not a word about
+uncle Richard yet; we must first see how we like each other, and--[in a
+whisper] you'll try and get that into my poor father's head?"
+
+"Ay, Richard," said Mrs. Avenel, quietly.  Richard put on his hat and
+went out by the back way.  He stole along the fields that skirted the
+town, and had only once to cross the street before he got into the high
+road.
+
+He walked on till he came to the first milestone.  There he seated
+himself, lighted his cigar, and awaited his nephew.  It was now nearly
+the hour of sunset, and the road before him lay westward.  Richard, from
+time to time, looked along the road, shading his eyes with his hand; and
+at length, just as the disk of the sun had half sunk down the horizon, a
+solitary figure came up the way.  It emerged suddenly from the turn in
+the road; the reddening beams coloured all the atmosphere around it.
+Solitary and silent it came as from a Land of Light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+"You have been walking far, young man?" said Richard Avenel.
+
+"No, sir, not very.  That is Lansmere before me, is it not?"
+
+"Yes, it is Lansmere; you stop there, I guess?"
+
+Leonard made a sign in the affirmative, and walked on a few paces; then,
+seeing the stranger who had accosted him still by his side, he said,--
+
+"If you know the town, sir, perhaps you will have the goodness to tell me
+whereabouts Mr. Avenel lives?"
+
+"I can put you into a straight cut across the fields, that will bring you
+just behind the house."
+
+"You are very kind, but it will take you out of your way."
+
+"No, it is in my way.  So you are going to Mr. Avenel's?--a good old
+gentleman."
+
+"I've always heard so; and Mrs. Avenel--"
+
+"A particular superior woman," said Richard.  "Any one else to ask
+after?--I know the family well."
+
+"No, thank you, sir."
+
+"They have a son, I believe; but he's in America, is he not?"
+
+"I believe he is, sir."
+
+"I see the parson has kept faith with me muttered Richard."
+
+"If you can tell me anything about HIM," said Leonard, "I should be very
+glad."
+
+"Why so, young man?  Perhaps he is hanged by this time."
+
+"Hanged!"
+
+"He was a sad dog, I am told."
+
+"Then you have been told very falsely," said Leonard, colouring.
+
+"A sad wild dog; his parents were so glad when he cut and run,--went off
+to the States.  They say he made money; but, if so, he neglected his
+relations shamefully."
+
+"Sir," said Leonard, "you are wholly misinformed.  He has been most
+generous to a relation who had little claim on him: and I never heard his
+name mentioned but with love and praise."
+
+Richard instantly fell to whistling "Yankee Doodle," and walked on
+several paces without saying a word.  He then made a slight apology for
+his impertinence, hoped no offence, and, with his usual bold but astute
+style of talk, contrived to bring out something of his companion's mind.
+He was evidently struck with the clearness and propriety with which
+Leonard expressed himself, raised his eyebrows in surprise more than
+once, and looked him full in the face with an attentive and pleased
+survey.  Leonard had put on the new clothes with which Riccabocca and his
+wife had provided him.  They were those appropriate to a young country
+tradesman in good circumstances; but as Leonard did not think about the
+clothes, so he had unconsciously something of the ease of the gentleman.
+
+They now came into the fields.  Leonard paused before a slip of ground
+sown with rye.
+
+"I should have thought grass-land would have answered better so near a
+town," said he.
+
+"No doubt it would," answered Richard; "but they are sadly behind-hand in
+these parts.  You see the great park yonder, on the other side of the
+road?  That would answer better for rye than grass; but then, what would
+become of my Lord's deer?  The aristocracy eat us up, young man."
+
+"But the aristocracy did not sow this piece with rye, I suppose?" said
+Leonard, smiling.
+
+"And what do you conclude from that?"
+
+"Let every man look to his own ground," said Leonard, with a cleverness
+of repartee caught from Dr. Riccabocca.
+
+"'Cute lad you are," said Richard; "and we'll talk more of these matters
+another time."
+
+They now came within sight of Mr. Avenel's house.
+
+"You can get through the gap in the hedge, by the old pollard-oak," said
+Richard; "and come round by the front of the house.  Why, you're not
+afraid, are you?"
+
+"I am a stranger."
+
+"Shall I introduce you?  I told you that I knew the old couple."
+
+"Oh, no, sir!  I would rather meet them alone."
+
+"Go; and--wait a bit-hark ye, young man, Mrs. Avenel is a cold-mannered
+woman; but don't be abashed by that."  Leonard thanked the good-natured
+stranger, crossed the field, passed the gap, and paused a moment under
+the stinted shade of the old hollow-hearted oak.  The ravens were
+returning to their nests.  At the sight of a human form under the tree
+they wheeled round and watched him afar.  From the thick of the boughs,
+the young ravens sent their hoarse low cry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+The young man entered the neat, prim, formal parlour.  "You are welcome!"
+said Mrs. Avenel, in a firm voice.  "The gentleman is heartily welcome,"
+cried poor John.
+
+"It is your grandson, Leonard Fairfield," said Mrs. Avenel.  But John,
+who had risen with knocking knees, gazed hard at Leonard, and then fell
+on his breast, sobbing aloud, "Nora's eyes!--he has a blink in his eye
+like Nora's."
+
+Mrs. Avenel approached with a steady step, and drew away the old man
+tenderly.
+
+"He is a poor creature," she whispered to Leonard; "you excite him.  Come
+away, I will show you your room."  Leonard followed her up the stairs,
+and came into a room neatly and even prettily furnished.  The carpet and
+curtains were faded by the sun, and of old-fashioned pattern; there was a
+look about the room as if it had been long disused.  Mrs. Avenel sank
+down on the first chair on entering.  Leonard drew his arm round her
+waist affectionately: "I fear that I have put you out sadly, my dear
+grandmother."  Mrs. Avenel glided hastily from his arm, and her
+countenance worked much, every nerve in it twitching, as it were; then,
+placing her hand on his locks, she said with passion, "God bless you, my
+grandson," and left the room.
+
+Leonard dropped his knapsack on the floor, and looked around him
+wistfully.  The room seemed as if it had once been occupied by a female.
+There was a work-box on the chest of drawers, and over it hanging shelves
+for books, suspended by ribbons that had once been blue, with silk and
+fringe appended to each shelf, and knots and tassels here and there,--the
+taste of a woman, or rather of a girl, who seeks to give a grace to the
+commonest things around her.  With the mechanical habit of a student,
+Leonard took down one or two of the volumes still left on the shelves.
+He found Spenser's "Faerie Queene," Racine in French, Tasso in Italian;
+and on the fly-leaf of each volume, in the exquisite handwriting familiar
+to his memory, the name "Leonora."  He kissed the books, and replaced
+them with a feeling akin both to tenderness and awe.
+
+He had not been alone in his room more than a quarter of an hour before
+the maid-servant knocked at his door and summoned him to tea.
+
+Poor John had recovered his spirits, and his wife sat by his side,
+holding his hand in hers.  Poor John was even gay.  He asked many
+questions about his daughter Jane, and did not wait for the answers.
+Then he spoke about the squire, whom he confounded with Audley Egerton,
+and talked of elections and the Blue party, and hoped Leonard would
+always be a good Blue; and then he fell to his tea and toast, and said no
+more.
+
+Mrs. Avenel spoke little, but she eyed Leonard askant, as it were, from
+time to time; and, after each glance, the nerves of the poor severe face
+twitched again.
+
+A little after nine o'clock, Mrs. Avenel lighted a candle, and placing it
+in Leonard's hand, said, "You must be tired,--you know your own room now.
+Good-night."
+
+Leonard took the light, and, as was his wont with his mother, kissed Mrs.
+Avenel on the cheek.  Then he took John's hand and kissed him too.  The
+old man was half asleep, and murmured dreamily, "That's Nora."
+
+Leonard had retired to his room about half an hour, when Richard Avenel
+entered the house softly, and joined his parents.
+
+"Well, Mother?" said he.
+
+"Well, Richard, you have seen him?"
+
+"And like him.  Do you know he has a great look of poor Nora?---more like
+her than Jane."
+
+"Yes; he is handsomer than Jane ever was, but more like your father than
+any one.  John was so comely.  You take to the boy, then?"
+
+"Ay, that I do.  Just tell him in the morning that he is to go with a
+gentleman who will be his friend, and don't say more.  The chaise shall
+be at the door after breakfast.  Let him get into it: I shall wait for
+him out of the town.  What's the room you gave him?"
+
+"The room you would not take."
+
+"The room in which Nora slept?  Oh, no!  I could not have slept a wink
+there.  What a charm there was in that girl! how we all loved her!  But
+she was too beautiful and good for us,--too good to live!"
+
+"None of us are too good," said Mrs. Avenel, with great austerity, "and I
+beg you will not talk in that way.  Goodnight,--I must get your poor
+father to bed."
+
+When Leonard opened his eyes the next morning, they rested on the face of
+Mrs. Avenel, which was bending over his pillow.  But it was long before
+he could recognize that countenance, so changed was its expression,--so
+tender, so mother-like.  Nay, the face of his own mother had never seemed
+to him so soft with a mother's passion.
+
+"Ah!" he murmured, half rising, and flinging his young arms round her
+neck.  Mrs. Avenel, this time taken by surprise, warmly returned the
+embrace; she clasped him to her breast, she kissed him again and again.
+At length, with a quick start, she escaped, and walked up and down the
+room, pressing her hands tightly together.  When she halted, her face had
+recovered its usual severity and cold precision.
+
+"It is time for you to rise, Leonard," said she.  "You will leave us
+to-day.  A gentleman has promised to take charge of you, and do for you
+more than we can.  A chaise will be at the door soon,--make haste."
+
+John was absent from the breakfast-table.  His wife said that he never
+rose till late, and must not be disturbed.
+
+The meal was scarcely over before a chaise and pair came to the door.
+
+"You must not keep the chaise waiting,--the gentleman is very punctual."
+
+"But he is not come."
+
+"No; he has walked on before, and will get in after you are out of the
+town."
+
+"What is his name, and why should he care for me, Grandmother?"
+
+"He will tell you himself.  Be quick."
+
+"But you will bless me again, Grandmother?  I love you already."
+
+"I do bless you," said Mrs. Avenel, firmly.  "Be honest and good, and
+beware of the first false step."  She pressed his hand with a convulsive
+grasp, and led him to the outer door.
+
+The postboy clanked his whip, the chaise rattled off.  Leonard put his
+head out of the window to catch a last glimpse of the old woman; but the
+boughs of the pollard-oak, and its gnarled decaying trunk, hid her from
+his eye, and look as he would, till the road turned, he saw but the
+melancholy tree.
+
+
+
+
+
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