"The first in birth, the first in fame."

men distinguished in literature and science, in senatorial eloquence and statesmanlike abilities.

But in this party at Clarendon Park there were more of the literary and celebrated than without the presence of Lady Davenant could perhaps have been assembled, or perhaps would have been desired by the general and Lady Cecilia. Cecilia's beauty and grace were of all societies, and the general was glad for Lady Davenant's sake and proud for his own part, to receive these distinguished persons at his house.

Helen had seen some of them before at Cecilhurst and at the Deanery. By her uncle's friends she was kindly recognised, by others of course politely noticed; but miserably would she have been disappointed and mortified, if she had expected to fix general attention, or excite general admiration. Past and gone for ever are the days, if ever they were, when a young lady, on her entrance into life, captivated by a glance, overthrew by the first word, and led in triumph her train of admirers. These things are not to be done now-a-days.

Yet even when unnoticed Helen was perfectly happy. Her expectations were more than gratified in seeing and in hearing these distinguished people, and she sat listening to their conversation in delightful enjoyment, without even wanting to have it seen how well she understood.

There is a precious moment for young people, if taken at the prime, when first introduced into society, yet not expected, not called upon to take a part in it, they, as standers by, may see not only all the play, but the characters of the players, and may learn more of life and of human nature in a few months, than afterwards in years, when they are themselves actors upon the stage of life, and become engrossed by their own parts. There is a time, before the passions are awakened, when the understanding, with all the life of nature, fresh from all that education can do to develop and cultivate, is at once eager to observe and able to judge, for a brief space blessed with the double advantages of youth and age. This time once gone is lost irreparably; and how often it is lost—in premature vanity, or premature dissipation!

Helen had been chiefly educated by a man, and a very sensible man, as Dean Stanley certainly was in all but money matters. Under his masculine care, while her mind had been brought forward on some points, it had been kept back on others, and while her understanding had been cultivated, it had been done without the aid of emulation or competition; not by touching the springs of pride, but by opening sources of pure pleasure; and this pure pleasure she now enjoyed, grateful to that dear uncle. For the single inimitable grace of simplicity which she possessed, how many mothers, governesses, and young ladies themselves, willingly, when they see how much it charms, would too late exchange half the accomplishments, all the acquirements, so laboriously achieved!

Beauclerc, who had seen something of the London female world, was, both from his natural taste and from contrast, pleased with Helen's fresh and genuine character, and he sympathised with all her silent delight. He never interrupted her in her enthusiastic contemplation of the great stars, but he would now and then seize an interval of rest to compare her observations with his own; anxious to know whether she estimated their relative magnitude and distances as he did. These snatched moments of comparison and proof of agreement in their observations, or the pleasure of examining the causes of their difference of opinion, enhanced the enjoyment of this brilliant fortnight; and not a cloud obscured the deep serene.

Notwithstanding all the ultra-refined nonsense Beauclerc had talked about his wish not to see remarkable persons, no one could enjoy it more, as Helen now perceived; and she saw also that he was considered as a man of promise among all these men of performance. But there were some, perhaps very slight things, which raised him still more in her mind, because they showed superiority of character. She observed his manner towards the general in this company, where he had himself the 'vantage ground—so different now from what it had been in the Old-Forest battle, when only man to man, ward to guardian. Before these distinguished persons there was a look—a tone of deference at once most affectionate and polite.

"It is so generous," said Lady Cecilia to Helen; "is not it?" and Helen agreed.

This brilliant fortnight ended too soon, as Helen thought, but Lady Cecilia had had quite enough of it. "They are all to go to-morrow morning, and I am not sorry for it," said she at night, as she threw herself into an arm-chair, in Helen's room; and, after having indulged in a refreshing yawn, she exclaimed, "Very delightful, very delightful! as you say, Helen, it has all been; but I am not sure that I should not be very much tired if I had much more of it. Oh! yes, I admired them all amazingly, but then admiring all day long is excessively wearisome. The very attitude of looking up fatigues both body and mind. Mamma is never tired, because she never has to look up; she can always look down, and that's so grand and so easy. She has no idea how the neck of my poor mind aches this minute; and my poor eyes! blasted with excess of light. How yours have stood it so well, Helen, I cannot imagine! how much stronger they must be than mine. I must confess, that, without the relief of music now and then, and ecarte, and that quadrille, bad as it was, I should never have got through it to-night alive or awake. But," cried she, starting up in her chair, "do you know Horace Churchill stays to-morrow. Such a compliment from him to stay a day longer than he intended! And do you know what he says of your eyes, Helen?—that they are the best listeners he ever spoke to. I should warn you though, my dear, that he is something, and not a little, I believe, of a male coquette. Though he is not very young, but he well understands all the advantages of a careful toilette. He has, like that George Herbert in Queen Elizabeth's time, 'a genteel humour for dress.' He is handsome still, and his fine figure, and his fine feelings, and his fine fortune, have broken two or three hearts; nevertheless I am delighted that he stays, especially that he stays on your account."

"Upon my account!" exclaimed Helen. "Did not you see that, from the first day when Mr. Churchill had the misfortune to be placed beside me at dinner, he utterly despised me: he began to talk to me, indeed, but left his sentence unfinished, his good story untold, the instant he caught the eye of a grander auditor."

Lady Cecilia had seen this, and marvelled at a well-bred man so far forgetting himself in vanity; but this, she observed, was only the first day; he had afterwards changed his manner towards Helen completely.

"Yes, when he saw Lady Davenant thought me worth speaking to. But, after all, it was quite natural that he should not know well what to say to me. I am only a young lady. I acquit him of all peculiar rudeness to me, for I am sure Mr. Churchill really could not talk for only one insignificant hearer, could not bring out his good things, unless he felt secure of possessing the attention of the whole dinner-table, so I quite forgive him."

"After this curse of forgiveness, my dear Helen, I will wish you a good night," said Lady Cecilia, laughing; and she retired with a fear that there would not be jealousy enough between the gentlemen, or that Helen would not know how to play them one against another.

There is a pleasure in seeing a large party disperse; in staying behind when others go:—there is advantage as well as pleasure, which is felt by the timid, because they do not leave their characters behind them; and rejoiced in by the satirical, because the characters of the departed and departing are left behind, fair game for them. Of this advantage no one could be more sensible, no one availed himself of it with more promptitude and skill, than Mr. Churchill: for well he knew that though wit may fail, humour may not take—though even flattery may pall upon the sense, scandal, satire, and sarcasm, are resources never failing for the lowest capacities, and sometimes for the highest.

This morning, in the library at Clarendon Park, he looked out of the window at the departing guests, and, as each drove off, he gave to each his coup de patte. To Helen, to whom it was new, it was wonderful to see how each, even of those next in turn to go, enjoyed the demolition of those who were just gone; how, blind to fate, they laughed, applauded, and licked the hand just raised to strike themselves. Of the first who went—"Most respectable people," said Lady Cecilia; "a bonne mere de famille."

"Most respectable people!" repeated Horace—"most respectable people, old coach and all." And then, as another party drove off—"No fear of any thing truly respectable here."

"Now, Horace, how can you say so?—she is so amiable and so clever."

"So clever? only, perhaps, a thought too fond of English liberty and French dress. _Poissarde lien corfee."

"Poissarde! of one of the best born, best bred women in England!" cried Lady Cecilia; "bien coiffee, I allow."

"Lady Cecilia is si coiffee de sa belle amie, that I see I must not say a word against her, till—the fashion changes. But, hark! I hear a voice I never wish to hear."

"Yet nobody is better worth hearing——"

"Oh! yes, the queen of the Blues—the Blue Devils!"

"Hush!" cried the aide-de-camp, "she is coming in to take leave." Then, as the queen of the Blue Devils entered, Mr, Churchill, in the most humbly respectful manner, begged—"My respects—I trust your grace will do me the favour—the justice to remember me to all your party who—do me the honour to bear me in mind—" then, as she left the room, he turned about and laughed.

"Oh! you sad, false man!" cried the lady next in turn to go. "I declare, Mr. Churchill, though I laugh, I am quite afraid to go off before you."

"Afraid! what could malice or envy itself find to say of your ladyship, intacte as you are?—Intacte!" repeated he, as she drove off, "intacte!—a well chosen epithet, I flatter myself!"

"Yes, intacte—untouched—above the breath of slander," cried Lady Cecilia.

"I know it: so I say," replied Churchill: "fidelity that has stood all temptations—to which it has ever been exposed; and her husband is——"

"A near relation of mine," said Lady Cecilia. "I am not prudish as to scandal in general," continued she, laughing; "'a chicken, too, might do me good,' hut then the fox must not prey at home. No one ought to stand by and hear their own relations abused."

"A thousand pardons! I depended too much on the general maxim—that the nearer the bone the sweeter the slander."

"Nonsense!" said Lady Cecilia.

"I meant to say, the nearer the heart the dearer the blame. A cut against a first cousin may go wrong—but a bosom friend—oh! how I have succeeded against best friends; scolded all the while, of course, and called a monster. But there is Sir Stephen bowing to you." Then, as Lady Cecilia kissed her hand to him from the window, Churchill went on: "By the by, without any scandal, seriously I heard something—I was quite concerned—that he had been of late less in his study and more in the boudoir of ———. Surely it cannot be true!"

"Positively false," said Lady Cecilia.

"At every breath a reputation dies," said Beauclerc.

"'Pon my soul, that's true!" said the aide-de-camp. "Positively, hit or miss, Horace has been going on, firing away with his wit, pop, pop, pop! till he has bagged—how many brace?"

Horace turned away from him contemptuously, and looked to see whereabouts Lady Davenant might be all this time.



CHAPTER XIV.

Lady Davenant was at the far end of the room engrossed, Churchill feared, by the newspaper; as he approached she laid it down, and said,—

"How scandalous some of these papers have become, but it is the fault of the taste of the age. 'Those who live to please, must please to live.'"

Horace was not sure whether he was cut or not, but he had the presence of mind not to look hurt. He drew nearer to Lady Davenant, seated himself, and taking up a book as if he was tired of folly, to which he had merely condescended, he sat and read, and then sat and thought, the book hanging from his hand.

The result of these profound thoughts he gave to the public, not to the aide-de-camp; no more of the little pop-gun pellets of wits—but now was brought out reason and philosophy. In a higher tone he now reviewed the literary, philosophical, and political world, with touches of La Bruyere and Rochefoucault in the characters he drew and in the reflections he made; with an air, too, of sentimental contrition for his own penetration and fine moral sense, which compelled him to see and to be annoyed by the faults of such superior men.

The analysis he made of every mind was really perfect—in one respect, not a grain of bad but was separated from the good, and held up clean and clear to public view. And as an anatomist he showed such knowledge both of the brain and of the heart, such an admirable acquaintance with all their diseases and handled the probe and the scalpel so well, with such a practised hand!

"Well, really this is comfortable," said Lord Davenant, throwing himself back in his arm-chair—"True English comfort, to sit at ease and see all one's friends so well dissected! Happy to feel that it is our duty to our neighbour to see him well cut up—ably anatomised for the good of society; and when I depart—when my time comes—as come it must, nobody is to touch me but Professor Churchill. It will be a satisfaction to know that I shall be carved as a dish fit for gods, not hewed as a carcase for hounds. So now remember, Cecilia, I call on you to witness—I hereby, being of sound mind and body, leave and bequeath my character, with all my defects and deficiencies whatsoever, and all and any singular curious diseases of the mind, of which I may die possessed, wishing the same many for his sake,—to my good friend Doctor Horace Churchill, professor of moral, philosophic, and scandalous anatomy, to be by him dissected at his good pleasure for the benefit of society."

"Many thanks, my good lord; and I accept your legacy for the honour—not the value of the gift, which every body must be sensible is nothing," said Churchill, with a polite bow—"absolutely nothing. I shall never he able to make anything of it."

"Try—try, my dear friend," answered Lord Davenant. "Try, don't be modest."

"That would be difficult when so distinguished," said Beauclerc, with an admirable look of proud humility.

"Distinguished Mr. Horace Churchill assuredly is," said Lady Davenant, looking at him from behind her newspaper. "Distinguished above all his many competitors in this age of scandal; he has really raised the art to the dignity of a science. Satire, scandal, and gossip, now hand-in-hand—the three new graces: all on the same elevated rank—three, formerly considered as so different, and the last left to our inferior sex, but now, surely, to be a male gossip is no reproach."

"O, Lady Davenant!—male gossip—what an expression!"

"What a reality!"

"Male gossip!—'Tombe sur moi le ciel!'" cried Churchill.

"'Pourvu que je me venge,' always understood," pursued Lady Davenant; "but why be so afraid of the imputation of gossiping, Mr. Churchill? It is quite fashionable, and if so, quite respectable, you know, and in your style quite grand.

"And gossiping wonders at being so fine—

"Malice, to be hated, needs but to be seen, but now when it is elegantly dressed we look upon it without shame or consciousness of evil; we grow to doat upon it—so entertaining, so graceful, so refined. When vice loses half its grossness, it loses all its deformity. Humanity used to be talked of when our friends were torn to pieces, but now there is such a philosophical perfume thrown over the whole operation, that we are irresistibly attracted. How much we owe to such men as Mr. Churchill, who make us feel detraction virtue!"

He bowed low as Lady Davenant, summoned by her lord, left the room, and there he stood as one condemned but not penitent.

"If I have not been well sentenced," said he, as the door closed, "and made 'to feel detraction virtue!'—But since Lady Cecilia cannot help smiling at that, I am acquitted, and encouraged to sin again the first opportunity. But Lady Davenant shall not be by, nor Lord Davenant either."

Lady Cecilia sat down to write a note, and Mr. Churchill walked round the room in a course of critical observation on the pictures, of which, as of every thing else, he was a supreme judge. At last he put his eye and his glass down to something which singularly attracted his attention on one of the marble tables.

"Pretty!" said Lady Cecilia, "pretty are not they?—though one's so tired of them every where now—those doves!"

"Doves!" said Churchill, "what I am admiring are gloves, are not they, Miss Stanley?" said he, pointing to an old pair of gloves, which, much wrinkled and squeezed together, lay on the beautiful marble in rather an unsightly lump.

"Poor Doctor V———," cried Helen to Cecilia; "that poor Doctor V———-is as absent as ever! he is gone, and has forgotten his gloves!"

"Absent! oh, as ever!" said Lady Cecilia, going on with her note, "the most absent man alive."

"Too much of that sort of thing I think there is in Doctor V———-," pursued Churchill: "a touch of absence of mind, giving the idea of high abstraction, becomes a learned man well enough; but then it should only be slight, as a soupcon of rouge, which may become a pretty woman; all depends on the measure, the taste, with which these things are managed— put on."

"There is nothing managed, nothing put on in Doctor V———," cried Helen, eagerly, her colour rising; "it is all perfectly sincere, true in him, whatever it be."

Beauclerc put down his hook.

"All perfectly true! You really think so, Miss Stanley?" said Churchill, smiling, and looking superior down.

"I do, indeed," cried Helen.

"Charming—so young! How I do love that freshness of mind!"

"Impertinent fellow! I could knock him down, felt Beauclerc.

"And you think all Doctor V———'s humility true?" said Churchill. "Yes, perfectly!" said Helen; "but I do not wonder you are surprised at it, Mr. Churchill."

She meant no malice, though for a moment he thought she did; and he winced under Beauclerc's smile.

"I do not wonder that any one who does not know Doctor V———should he surprised by his great humility," added Helen.

"You are sure that it is not pride that apes humility?" asked Churchill.

"Yes, quite sure!"

"Yet—" said Churchill (putting his malicious finger through a great hole in the thumb of the doctor's glove) "I should have fancied that I saw vanity through the holes in these gloves, as through the philosopher's cloak of old."

"Horace is a famous fellow for picking holes and making much of them, Miss Stanley, you see," said the aide-de-camp.

"Vanity! Doctor V——has no vanity!" said Helen, "if you knew him."

"No vanity! Whom does Miss Stanley mean?" cried the aide-de-camp. "No vanity? that's good. Who? Horace?"

"Mauvais plaisant!" Horace put him by, and, happily not easily put out of countenance, he continued to Helen,—

"You give the good doctor credit, too, for all his naivete?" said Churchill.

"He does not want credit for it," said Helen, "he really has it."

"I wish I could see things as you do, Miss Stanley."

"Show him that, Helen," cried Lady Cecilia, looking at a table beside them, on which lay one of those dioramic prints which appear all a confusion of lines till you look at them in their right point of view. "Show him that—it all depends, and so does seeing characters, on getting the right point of view."

"Ingenious!" said Churchill, trying to catch the right position; "but I can't, I own—" then abruptly resuming, "Naviete charms me at fifteen," and his eye glanced at Helen, then was retracted, then returning to his point of view, "at eighteen perhaps may do," and his eyes again turned to Helen, "at eighteen—it captivates me quite," and his eye dwelt. "But naivete at past fifty, verging to sixty, is quite another thing, really rather too much for me. I like all things in season, and above all, simplicity will not bear long keeping. I have the greatest respect possible for our learned and excellent friend, but I wish this could be any way suggested to him, and that he would lay aside this out-of-season simplicity."

"He cannot lay aside his nature," said Helen, "and I am glad of it, it is such a good nature."

"Kind-hearted creature he is, I never heard him say a severe word of any one," said Lady Cecilia.

"What a sweet man he must he!" said Horace, making a face at which none present, not even Helen, could forbear to smile. "His heart, I am sure, is in the right place always. I only wish one could say the same of his wig. And would it be amiss if he sometimes (I would not be too hard upon him, Miss Stanley), once a fortnight, suppose—brushed, or caused to be brushed, that coat of his?"

"You have dusted his jacket for him famously, Horace, I think," said the aide-de-camp.

At this instant the door opened, and in came the doctor himself.

Lady Cecilia's hand was outstretched with her note, thinking, as the door opened, that she should see the servant come in, for whom she had rung.

"What surprises you all so, my good friends," said the doctor, stopping and looking round in all his native simplicity.

"My dear doctor" said Lady Cecilia, "only we all thought you were gone—that's all."

"And I am not gone, that's all. I stayed to write a letter, and am come here to look for—but I cannot find-my—"

"Your gloves, perhaps, doctor, you are looking for," said Churchill, going forward, and with an air of the greatest respect and consideration, both for the gloves and for their owner, he presented them; then shook the doctor by the hand, with a cordiality which the good soul thought truly English, and, bowing him out, added, "How proud he had been to make his acquaintance,—au revoir, he hoped, in Park Lane."

"Oh you treacherous—!" cried Lady Cecilia, turning to Horace, as soon as the unsuspecting philosopher was fairly gone. "Too bad really! If he were not the most simple-minded creature extant, he must have seen, suspected, something from your look; and what would have become of you if the doctor had come in one moment sooner, and had heard you—I was really frightened."

"Frightened! so was I, almost out of my wits," said Churchill. "Les revenans always frighten one; and they never hear any good of themselves, for which reason I make it a principle, when once I have left a room, full of friends especially, never—never to go back. My gloves, my hat, my coat, I'd leave, sooner than lose my friends. Once I heard it said, by one who knew the world and human nature better than any of us—once I heard it said in jest, but in sober earnest I say, that I would not for more than I am worth be placed, without his knowing it, within earshot of my best friend."

"What sort of a best friend can yours he?" cried Beauclerc.

"Much like other people's, I suppose," replied Horace, speaking with perfect nonchalance—"much like other people's best friends. Whosoever expects to find better, I guess, will find worse, if he live in the world we live in."

"May I go out of the world before I believe or suspect any such thing?" cried Beauclerc. "Rather than have the Roman curse light upon me, 'May you survive all your friends and relations!' may I die a thousand times!"

"Who talks of dying, in a voice so sweet—a voice so loud?" said provoking Horace, in his calm, well-bred tone; "for my part, I who have the honour of speaking to you, can boast, that never since I was of years of discretion (counting new style, beginning at thirteen, of course)—never have I lost a friend, a sincere friend—never, for this irrefragable reason—since that nonage, never was I such a neophyte as to fancy I had found that lusus natures, a friend perfectly sincere."

"How I pity you!" cried Beauclerc, "if you are in earnest; but in earnest you can't be."

"Pardon me, I can, and I am. And in earnest you will oblige me, Mr. Beauclerc, if you will spare me your pity: for, all things in this world considered," said Horace Churchill, drawing himself up, "I do not conceive that I am much an object of pity." Then, turning upon his heel, he walked away, conscious, however, half an instant afterwards, that he had drawn himself up too high, and that for a moment his temper had spoiled his tone, and betrayed him into a look and manner too boastful, bordering on the ridiculous. He was in haste to repair the error.

Not Garrick, in the height of his celebrity and of his susceptibility, was ever more anxious than Horace Churchill to avert the stroke of ridicule—to guard against the dreaded smile. As he walked away, he felt behind his back that those he left were smiling in silence.

Lady Cecilia had thrown herself on a sofa, resting, after the labour of l'eloquence de billet. He stopped, and, leaning over the back of the sofa on which she reclined, repeated an Italian line in which was the word "pavoneggiarsi."

"My dear Lady Cecilia, you, who understand and feel Italian so well, how expressive are some of their words! Pavoneggiarsi!—untranslatable. One cannot say well in English, to peacock oneself. To make oneself like unto a peacock is flat; but pavoneggiarsi—action, passion, picture, all in one! To plume oneself comes nearest to it; but the word cannot be given, even by equivalents, in English; nor can it be naturalised, because, in fact, we have not the feeling. An Englishman is too proud to boast—too bashful to strut; if ever he peacocks himself, it is in a moment of anger, not in display. The language of every country," continued he, raising his voice, in order to reach Lady Davenant, who just then returned to the room, as he did not wish to waste a philosophical observation on Lady Cecilia,—"the language of every country is, to a certain degree, evidence, record, history of its character and manners." Then, lowering his voice almost to a whisper, but very distinct, turning while he spoke so as to make sure that Miss Stanley heard—"Your young friend this morning quite captivated me by her nature—nature, the thing that now is most uncommon, a real natural woman; and when in a beauty, how charming! How delicious when one meets with effusion de coeur: a young lady, too, who speaks pure English, not a leash of languages at once; and cultivated, too, your friend is, for one does not like ignorance, if one could have knowledge without pretension—so hard to find the golden mean!—and if one could find it, one might not be nearer to——"

Lady Cecilia listened for the finishing word, but none came. It all ended in a sigh, to be interpreted as she pleased. A look towards the ottoman, where Beauclerc had now taken his seat beside Miss Stanley, seemed to point the meaning out: but Lady Cecilia knew her man too well to understand him.

Beauclerc, seated on the ottoman, was showing to Helen some passages in the book he was reading; she read with attention, and from time to time looked up with a smile of intelligence and approbation. What either said Horace could not hear, and he was the more curious, and when the book was put down, after carelessly opening others he took it up. Very much surprised was he to find it neither novel nor poem: many passages were marked with pencil notes of approbation, he took it for granted these were Bleauclerc's; there he was mistaken, they were Lady Davenant's. She was at her work-table. Horace, book in hand, approached; the book was not in his line, it was more scientific than literary—it was for posterity more than for the day; he had only turned it over as literary men turn over scientific books, to seize what may serve for a new simile or a good allusion; besides, among his philosophical friends, the book being talked of, it was well to know enough of it to have something to say, and he had said well, very judiciously he had praised it among the elect; but now it was his fancy to depreciate it with all his might; not that he disliked the author or the work now more than he had done before, but he was in the humour to take the opposite side from Beauclerc, so he threw the book from him contemptuously "Rather a slight hasty thing, in my opinion," said he. Beauclerc's eyes took fire as he exclaimed, "Slight! hasty! this most noble, most solid work!"

"Solid in your opinion," said Churchill, with a smile deferential, slightly sneering.

"Our own opinion is all that either of us can give," said Beauclerc; "in my opinion it is the finest view of the progress of natural philosophy, the most enlarged, the most just in its judgments of the past, and in its prescience of the future; in the richness of experimental knowledge, in its theoretic invention, the greatest work by any one individual since the time of Bacon."

"And Bacon is under your protection, too?"

"Protection! my protection?" said Beauclerc.

"Pardon me, I simply meant to ask if you are one of those who swear by Lord Verulam."

"I swear by no man, I do not swear at all, not on philosophical subjects especially; swearing adds nothing to faith," said Beauclerc.

"I stand corrected," said Churchill, "and I would go further, and add that in argument enthusiasm adds nothing to reason—much as I admire, as we all admire," glancing at Miss Stanley, "that enthusiasm with which this favoured work has been advocated!"

"I could not help speaking warmly," cried Beauclerc; "it is a book to inspire enthusiasm; there is such a noble spirit all through it, so pure from petty passions, from all vulgar jealousies, all low concerns! Judge of a book, somebody says, by the impression it leaves on your mind when you lay it down; this book stands that test, at least with me, I lay it down with such a wish to follow—with steps ever so unequal still to follow, where it points the way."

"Bravo! bravissimo! hear him, hear him! print him, print him! hot-press from the author to the author, hot-press!" cried Churchill, and he laughed.

Like one suddenly awakened from the trance of enthusiasm by the cold touch of ridicule, stood Beauclerc, brought down from heaven to earth, and by that horrid little laugh, not the heart's laugh.

"But my being ridiculous does not make my cause so, and that is a comfort." "And another comfort you may have, my dear Granville," said Lady Davenant, "that ridicule is not the test of truth; truth should be the test of ridicule."

"But where is the book?" continued Beauclerc.

Helen gave it to him.

"Now, Mr. Churchill," said Beauclerc; "I am really anxious, I know you are such a good critic, will you show me these faults? blame as well as praise must always he valuable from those who themselves excel."

"You are too good," said Churchill.

"Will you then be good enough to point out the errors for me?"

"Oh, by no means," cried Churchill, "don't note me, do not quote me, I am nobody, and I cannot give up my authorities."

"But the truth is all I want to get at," said Beauclerc.

"Let her rest, my dear sir, at the bottom of her well; there she is, and there she will be for ever and ever, and depend upon it none of our windlassing will ever bring her up."

"Such an author as this," continued Beauclerc, "would have been so glad to have corrected any error."

"So every author tells you, but I never saw one of them who did not look blank at a list of errata—if you knew how little one is thanked for them!"

"But you would be thanked now," said Beauclerc:—"the faults in style, at least."

"Nay, I am no critic," said Churchill, confident in his habits of literary detection; "but if you ask me," said he, as he disdainfully flirted the leaves back and forward with a "There now!" and a "Here now!" "We should not call that good writing—you could not think this correct? I may be wrong, but I should not use this phrase. Hardly English that—colloquial, I think; and this awkward ablative absolute—never admitted now."

"Thank you," said Beauclerc, "these faults are easily mended."

"Easily mended, say you? I say, better make a new one."

"WHO COULD?" said Beauclerc.

"How many faults you see," said Helen, "which I should never have perceived unless you had pointed them out, and I am sorry to know them now." Smiling at Helen's look of sincere mortification, in contrast at this moment with Mr. Churchill's air of satisfied critical pride, Lady Davenant said,—

"Why sorry, my dear Helen? No human work can be perfect; Mr. Churchill may be proud of that strength of eye which in such a powerful light can count the spots. But whether it be the best use to make of his eyes, or the best use that can be made of the light, remains to be considered."



CHAPTER XV.

Beyond measure was Churchill provoked to find Lady Davenant against him and on the same side as Granville Beauclerc—all unused to contradiction in his own society, where he had long been supreme, he felt a difference of opinion so sturdily maintained as a personal insult.

For so young a man as Beauclerc, yet unknown to fame, not only to challenge the combat but to obtain the victory, was intolerable; and the more so, because his young opponent appeared no ways elated or surprised, but seemed satisfied to attribute his success to the goodness of his cause.

Churchill had hitherto always managed wisely his great stakes and pretensions in both the fashionable and literary world. He had never actually published any thing except a clever article or two in a review, or an epigram, attributed to him but not acknowledged. Having avoided giving his measure, it was believed he was above all who had been publicly tried—it was always said—"If Horace Churchill would but publish, he would surpass every other author of our times."

Churchill accordingly dreaded and hated all who might by possibility approach the throne of fashion, or interfere with his dictatorship in a certain literary set in London, and from this moment he began cordially to detest Beauclerc—he viewed him with a scornful, yet with jealous eyes; but his was the jealousy of vanity, not of love; it regarded Lady Davenant and his fashionable reputation in the first place—Helen only in the second.

Lady Davenant observed all this, and was anxious to know how much or how little Helen had seen, and what degree of interest it excited in her mind. One morning, when they were alone together, looking over a cabinet of cameos, Lady Davenant pointed to one which she thought like Mr. Beauclerc. Helen did not see the likeness.

"People see likenesses very differently," said Lady Davenant. "But you and I, Helen, usually see characters, if not faces, with the same eyes. I have been thinking of these two gentlemen, Mr. Churchill and Mr. Beauclerc—which do you think the most agreeable?"

"Mr. Churchill is amusing certainly," said Helen, "but I think Mr. Beauclerc's conversation much more interesting—though Mr. Churchill is agreeable, sometimes—when—"

"When he flatters you," said Lady Davenant.

"When he is not satirical—I was going to say," said Helen.

"There is a continual petty brilliancy, a petty effort too," continued Lady Davenant, "in Mr. Churchill, that tires me—sparks struck perpetually, but then you hear the striking of the flints, the clink of the tinder-box."

Helen, though she admitted the tinder-box, thought it too low a comparison. She thought Churchill's were not mere sparks.

"Well, fireworks, if you will," said Lady Davenant, "that rise, blaze, burst, fall, and leave you in darkness, and with a disagreeable smell too; and it's all feu d'artifice after all. Now in Beauclerc there is too little art and too ardent nature. Some French friends of mine who knew both, said of Mr. Churchill, 'De l'esprit on ne peut pas plus meme a Paris,' the highest compliment a Parisian can pay, but they allowed that Beauclerc had 'beaucoup plus d'ame.'"

"Yes," said Helen; "how far superior!"

"It has been said," continued Lady Davenant, "that it is safer to judge of men by their actions than by their words, but there are few actions and many words in life; and if women would avail themselves of their daily, hourly, opportunities of judging people by their words, they would get at the natural characters, or, what is of just as much consequence, they would penetrate through the acquired habits; and here Helen, you have two good studies before you."

Preoccupied as Helen was with the certainty of Beauclerc being an engaged, almost a married man, and looking, as she did, on Churchill as one who must consider her as utterly beneath his notice, she listened to Lady Davenant's remarks as she would have done to observations about two characters in a novel or on the stage.

As Churchill could not immediately manifest his hatred of Beauclerc, it worked inwardly the more. He did not sleep well this night, and when he got up in the morning, there was something the matter with him. Nervous, bilious—cross it could not be;—journalier (a French word settles everything)—journalier he allowed he was; he rather gloried in it, because his being permitted to be so proved his power,—his prerogative of fortune and talent combined.

In the vast competition of the London world, it is not permitted to every man to be in his humour or out of his humour at pleasure; but, by an uncommon combination of circumstances, Churchill had established his privilege of caprice; he was allowed to have his bad and his good days, and the highest people and the finest smiled, and submitted to his "cachet de faveur et de disgrace;" and when he was sulky, rude, or snappish, called it only Horace Churchill's way. They even prided themselves on his preferences and his aversions. "Horace is always charming when he is with us."—"With me you have no idea how delightful he is."—"Indeed I must do him the justice to say, that I never found him otherwise."—While the less favoured permitted him to be as rude as he pleased, and only petted him, and told of his odd ways to those who sighed in vain to have him at their parties. But Lady Davenant was not a person to pet or spoil a child of any age, and to the general, Mr. Churchill was not particularly agreeable—not his sort; while to Lady Cecilia, secure in grace, beauty, and fashion, his humours were only matter of amusement, and she bore with him pleasantly and laughingly.

"Such weather!" cried he in a querulous tone; "how can a man have any sense in such weather? Some foreigner says, that the odious climate of England is an over-balance for her good constitution. The sun of the south is in truth well worth the liberty of the north. It is a sad thing," said he, with a very sentimental air, "that a free-born Briton should be servile to these skyey influences;" and, grumbling on, he looked out of the window as cross as he pleased, and nobody minded him. The aide-de-camp civilly agreed with him that it was horrid weather, and likely to rain, and it did rain; and every one knows how men, like children, are in certain circumstances affected miserably by a rainy day. There was no going out; horses at the door, and obliged to be dismissed. Well, since there could be no riding, the next best thing the aide-de-camp thought, was to talk of horses, and the officers all grew eager, and Churchill had a mind to exert himself so far as to show them that he knew more of the matter than they did; that he was no mere book-man; but on this unlucky day, all went wrong. It happened that Horace fell into some grievous error concerning the genealogy of a famous race-horse, and, disconcerted more than he would have been at being convicted of any degree of moral turpitude, vexed and ashamed, he talked no more of Newmarket or of Doncaster, left the race-ground to those who prided themselves on the excellences of their four-footed betters, and lounged into the billiard-room.

He found Lady Cecilia playing with Beauclerc; Miss Stanley was looking on. Churchill was a famous billiard-player, and took his turn to show how much better than Beauclerc he performed, but this day his hand was out, his eye not good; he committed blunders of which a novice might have been ashamed. And there was Miss Stanley and there was Beauclerc by to see! and Beauclerc pitied him!

O line extreme of human misery!

He retreated to the book-room, but there the intellectual Horace, with all the sages, poets, and novelists of every age within his reach, reached them not; but, with his hands in his pockets, like any squire or schoolboy under the load of ignorance or penalties of idleness, stood before the chimney-piece, eyeing the pendule, and verily believing that this morning the hands went backward. Dressing-time at last came, and dinner-time, bringing relief how often to man and child ill-tempered; but, this day to Churchill dinner brought only discomfiture worse discomfited.

Some of the neighbouring families were to dine at Clarendon Park. Mr. Churchill abhorred country neighbours and country gentlemen. Among these, however, were some not unworthy to be perceived by him; and besides these, there were some foreign officers; one in particular, from Spain, of high rank and birth, of the sangre azul, the blue blood, who have the privilege of the silken cord if they should come to be hanged. This Spaniard was a man of distinguished talent, and for him Horace might have been expected to shine out; it was his pleasure, however, this day to disappoint expectations, and to do "the dishonours of his country." He would talk only of eating, of which he was privileged not only to speak but to judge, and pronounce upon en dernier ressort, though this was only an air, for he was not really a gourmand; but after ogling through his glass the distant dishes, when they with a wish came nigh, he, after a cursory glance or a close inspection, made them with a nod retire.

At last he thought an opportunity offered for bringing in a well-prepared anecdote which he had about Cambaceres, and a hot blackbird and white feet, but unluckily a country gentleman would tell some history of a battle between poachers and gamekeepers, which fixed the attention of the company till the moment for the anecdote was past.

Horace left his tale untold, and spoke word never more till a subject was started on which he thought he could come out unrivalled. General Clarendon had some remarkably good wines. Churchill was referred to as a judge, and he allowed them to be all good, but he prided himself on possessing a certain Spanish wine, esteemed above all price, because not to be had for money—amontillado is its name. Horace appealed to the Spanish officer, who confirmed all he said of this vinous phenomenon. "No cultivator can be certain of producing it. It has puzzled, almost to death, all the growers of Xeres:—it is a variety of sherry, almost as difficult to judge of as to procure."

But Mr. Churchill boasted he had some, undoubtedly genuine; he added, "that Spanish judges had assured him his taste was so accurate he might venture to pronounce upon the difficult question of amontillado or not!"

While he yet spoke, General Clarendon, unawares, placed before him some of this very fine wine, which, as he finished speaking, Churchill swallowed without knowing it from some other sherry which he had been drinking. He would have questioned that it was genuine, but the Spaniard, as far as he could pretend to judge, thought it unquestionable.

Churchill's countenance fell in a manner that quite surprised Helen, and exceedingly amused Lady Cecilia. He was more mortified and vexed by this failure than by all the rest, for the whole table smiled.

The evening of this day of misfortune was not brighter than the morning, everything was wrong—even at night—at night when at last the dinner company, the country visitors, relieved him from their presence, and when some comfort might be had, he thought, stretched in a good easy-chair—Lord Davenant had set him the example. But something had happened to all the chairs,—there was a variety of fashionable kinds; he tried them by turns, but none of them this night would suit him. Yet Lady Cecilia maintained (for the general had chosen them) that they were each and all of them in their way comfortable, in the full English spirit of the word, and according to the French explanation of comfortable, given to us by the Duchess d'Abrantes, convenablement bon; but in compassion to Mr. Churchill's fastidious restlessness, she would now show him a perfection of a chair which she had just had made for her own boudoir. She ordered that it should be brought, and in it rolled, and it was looked at in every direction and sat in, and no fault could be found with it, even by the great faultfinder; but what was it called? It was neither a lounger, nor a dormeuse, nor a Cooper, nor a Nelson, nor a kangaroo: a chair without a name would never do; in all things fashionable the name is more than half. Such a happy name as kangaroo Lady Cecilia despaired of finding for her new favourite, but she begged some one would give it a good one; whoever gave her the best name should be invited to the honours and pleasures of the sitting in this chair for the rest of the night.

Her eyes, and all eyes, turned upon Mr. Churchill, but whether the occasion was too great, or that his desire to satisfy the raised expectation of the public was too high strained, or that the time was out of joint, or that he was out of sorts, the fact was, he could find no name.

Beauclerc, who had not yet tried the chair, sank into its luxurious depth, and leaning back, asked if it might not be appropriately called the "Sleepy-hollow."

"Sleepy-hollow!" repeated Lady Cecilia, "excellent!" and by acclammation "Sleepy-hollow" was approved; but when Beauclerc was invited to the honours of the sitting, he declined, declaring that the name was not his invention, only his recollection; it had been given by a friend of his to some such easy chair.

This magnanimity was too much for Horace; he looked at his watch, found it was bed-time, pushed the chair out of his way, and departed; Beauclerc, the first and last idea in this his day of mortifications.

Seeing a man subject to these petty irritations lowers him in the eyes of woman. For that susceptibility of temper arising from the jealousy of love, even when excited by trifles, woman makes all reasonable, all natural allowance; but for the jealousy of self-love she has no pity. Unsuited to the manly character!—so Helen thought, and so every woman thinks.



CHAPTER XVI.

It was expected by all who had witnessed his discomfiture and his parting push to the chair, that Mr. Churchill would be off early in the morning—such was his wont when he was disturbed in vanity: but he reappeared at breakfast.

This day was a good day with Horace; he determined it should be so, and though it was again a wet day, he now showed that he could rule the weather of his own humour, when intensity of will was wakened by rivalry. He made himself most agreeable, and the man of yesterday was forgotten or remembered only as a foil to the man of to-day. The words he so much loved to hear, and to which he had so often surreptitiously listened, were now repeated, 'No one can be so agreeable as Horace Churchill is on his good days!'

Bright he shone out, all gaiety and graciousness; the cachet de faveur was for all, but its finest impression was for Helen. He tried flattery, and wit, each playing on the other with reflected and reflecting lustre, for a woman naturally says to herself, "When this man has so much wit, his flattery even must be worth something."

And another day came, and another, and another party of friends filled the house, and still Mr. Churchill remained, and was now the delight of all. As far as concerned his successes in society, no one was more ready to join in applause than Beauclerc; but when Helen was in question he was different, though he had reasoned himself into the belief that he could not yet love Miss Stanley, therefore he could not be jealous. But he had been glad to observe that she had from the first seemed to see what sort of a person Mr. Churchill was. She was now only amused, as everybody must be, but she would never be interested by such a man as Horace Churchill, a wit without a soul. If she were—why he could never feel any further interest about her—that was all!

So it went on; and now Lady Cecilia was as much amused as she expected by these daily jealousies, conflicts, and comparisons, the feelings perpetually tricking themselves out, and strutting about, calling themselves judgments, like the servants in Gil Blas in their masters' clothes, going about as counts dukes, and grandees.

"Well, really," said Lady Cecilia to Helen, one day, as she was standing near her tambour frame, "you are an industrious creature, and the only very industrious person I ever could bear. I have myself a natural aversion to a needle, but that tambour needle I can better endure than a common one, because, in the first place, it makes a little noise in the world; one not only sees but hears it getting on; one finds, that without dragging it draws at every link a lengthened chain."

"It is called chainstitch, is it not?" said the aide-de-camp; "and Miss Stanley is working on so famously fast at it she will have us all in her chains by and by."

"Bow, Miss Stanley," said Lady Cecilia; "that pretty compliment deserves at least a bow, if not a look-up."

"I should prefer a look-down, if I were to choose," said Churchill.

"Beggars must not be choosers," said the aide-de-camp.

"But the very reason I can bear to look at you working, Helen," continued Lady Cecilia, "is, because you do look up so often—so refreshingly. The professed Notables I detest—those who never raise their eyes from their everlasting work; whatever is said, read, thought, or felt, is with them of secondary importance to that bit of muslin in which they are making holes, or that bit of canvass on which they are perpetrating such figures or flowers as nature scorns to look upon. I did not mean anything against you mamma, I assure you," continued Cecilia, turning to her mother, who was also at her embroidering frame, "because, though you do work, or have work before you, to do you justice, you never attend to it in the least."

"Thank you! my dear Cecilia," said Lady Davenant, smiling; "I am, indeed, a sad bungler, but still I shall always maintain a great respect for work and workers, and I have good reasons for it."

"And so have I," said Lord Davenant. "I only wish that men who do not know what to do with their hands, were not ashamed to sew. If custom had but allowed us this resource, how many valuable lives might have been saved, how many rich ennuyes would not have hung themselves, even in November! What years of war, what overthrow of empires, might have been avoided, if princes and sultans, instead of throwing handkerchiefs, had but hemmed them!"

"No, no," said Lady Davenant, "recollect that the race of Spanish kings has somewhat deteriorated since they exchanged the sword for the tambour-frame. We had better have things as they are: leave us the privilege of the needle, and what a valuable resource it is; sovereign against the root of all evil—an antidote both to love in idleness and hate in idleness—which is most to be dreaded, let those who have felt both decide. I think we ladies must be allowed to keep the privilege of the needle to ourselves, humble though it be, for we must allow it is a good one."

"Good at need," said Churchill. "There is an excellent print, by Bouck, I believe, of an old woman beating the devil with a distaff; distaffs have been out of fashion with spinsters ever since, I fancy."

"But as she was old, Churchill," said Lord Davenant, "might not your lady have defied his black majesty, without her distaff?"

"His black majesty! I admire your distinction, my lord," said Churchill, "but give it more emphasis; for all kings are not black in the eyes of the fair, it is said, you know." And here he began an anecdote of regal scandal in which Lady Cecilia stopped him——

"Now, Horace, I protest against your beginning with scandal so early in the morning. None of your on dits, for decency's sake, before luncheon; wait till evening."

Churchill coughed, and shrugged, and sighed, and declared he would be temperate; he would not touch a character, upon his honour; he would only indulge in a few little personalities; it could not hurt any lady's feelings that he should criticise or praise absent beauties. So he just made a review of all he could recollect, in answer to a question one of the officers, Captain Warmsley, had asked him, and which, in an absent fit, he had had the ill-manners yesterday, as now he recollected, not to answer—Whom he considered as altogether the handsomest woman of his acquaintance? Beauclerc was now in the room, and Horace was proud to display, before him in particular, his infinite knowledge of all the fair and fashionable, and all that might be admitted fashionable without being fair—all that have the je ne sais quoi, which is than beauty dearer. As one conscious of his power to consecrate or desecrate, by one look of disdain or one word of praise, he stood; and beginning at the lowest conceivable point, his uttermost notion of want of beauty—his laid ideal, naming one whose image, no doubt, every charitable imagination will here supply, Horace next fixed upon another for his mediocrity point—what he should call "just well enough"—assez bien, assez—just up to the Bellasis motto, "Bonne et belle assez." Then, in the ascending scale, he rose to those who, in common parlance, may be called charming, fascinating; and still for each he had his fastidious look and depreciating word. Just keeping within the verge, Horace, without exposing himself to the ridicule of coxcombry, ended by sighing for that being 'made of every creature's best'—perfect, yet free from the curse of perfection. Then, suddenly turning to Beauclerc, and tapping him on the shoulder—"Do, give us your notions—to what sort of a body or mind, now, would you willingly bend the knee?"

Beauclerc could not or would not tell—"I only know that whenever I bend the knee," said he, "it will be because I cannot help it!"

Beauclerc could not be drawn out either by Churchill's persiflage or flattery, and he tried both, to talk of his tastes or opinions of women. He felt too much perhaps about love to talk much about it. This all agreed well in Helen's imagination with what Lady Cecilia had told her of his secret engagement. She was sure he was thinking of Lady Blanche, and that he could not venture to describe her, lest he should betray himself and his secret. Then, leaving Churchill and the talkers, he walked up and down the room alone, at the further side, seeming as if he were recollecting some lines which he repeated to himself, and then stopping before Lady Cecilia, repeated to her, in a very low voice, the following:—

"I saw her upon nearer view, A spirit, yet a woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles."

Helen thought Lady Blanche must be a charming creature if she was like this picture; but somehow, as she afterwards told Lady Cecilia, she had formed a different idea of Lady Blanche Forrester—Cecilia smiled and asked, "How? different how?"

Helen did not exactly know, but altogether she had imagined that she must be more of a heroine, or perhaps more of a woman of rank and fashion. She had not formed any exact idea—but different altogether from this description. Lady Cecilia again smiled, and said, "Very natural; and after all not very certain that the Lady Blanche is like this picture, which was not drawn for her or from her assuredly—a resemblance found only in the imagination, to which we are, all of us, more or less, dupes; and tant mieux say I—tant pis says mamma—and all mothers."

"There is one thing I like better in Mr. Beauclerc's manners than in Mr. Churchill," said Helen.

"There are a hundred I like better," said Lady Cecilia, "but what is your one thing?"

"That he always speaks of women in general with respect—as if he had more confidence in them, and more dependence upon them for his happiness. Now Mr. Churchill, with all the adoration he professes, seems to look upon them as idols that he can set up or pull down, bend the knee to or break to pieces, at pleasure—I could not like a man for a friend who had a bad, or even a contemptuous, opinion of women—could you, Cecilia?"

"Certainly not," Lady Cecilia said; "the general had always, naturally, the greatest respect for women. Whatever prejudices he had taken up had been only caught from others, and lasted only till he had got rid of the impression of certain 'untoward circumstances.'" Even a grave, serious dislike, both Lady Cecilia and Helen agreed that they could bear better than that persiflage which seemed to mock even while it most professed to admire.

Horace presently discovered the mistakes he had made in his attempts, and repaired them as fast as he could by his infinite versatility. The changes shaded off with a skill which made them run easily into each other. He perceived that Mr. Beauclerc's respectful air and tone were preferred, and he now laid himself out in the respectful line, adding, as he flattered himself, something of a finer point, more polish in whatever he said, and with more weight of authority.

But he was mortified to find that it did not produce the expected effect, and, after having done the respectful one morning, as he fancied, in the happiest manner, he was vexed to perceive that he not only could not raise Helen's eyes from her work, but that even Lady Davenant did not attend to him: and that, as he was rounding one of his best periods, her looks were directed to the other side of the room, where Beauclerc sat apart; and presently she called to him, and begged to know what it was he was reading. She said she quite envied him the power he possessed of being rapt into future times or past, completely at his author's bidding, to be transported how and where he pleased.

Beauclerc brought the book to her, and put it into her hand. As she took it she said, "As we advance in life, it becomes more and more difficult to find in any book the sort of enchanting, entrancing interest which we enjoyed when life, and, books, and we ourselves were new. It were vain to try and settle whether the fault is most in modern books, or in our ancient selves; probably not in either: the fact is, that not only does the imagination cool and weaken as we grow older, but we become, as we live on in this world, too much engrossed by the real business and cares of life, to have feeling or time for factitious, imaginary interests. But why do I say factitious? while they last, the imaginative interests are as real as any others."

"Thank you," said Beauclerc, "for doing justice to poor imagination, whose pleasures are surely, after all, the highest, the most real, that we have, unwarrantably as they have been decried both by metaphysicians and physicians."

The book which had so fixed Beauclerc's attention, was Segur's History of Napoleon's Russian Campaign. He was at the page where the burning of Moscow is described—the picture of Buonaparte's despair, when he met resolution greater than his own, when he felt himself vanquished by the human mind, by patriotism, by virtue—virtue in which he could not believe, the existence of which, with all his imagination, he could not conceive: the power which his indomitable will could not conquer.

Beauclerc pointed to the account of that famous inscription on the iron gate of a church which the French found still standing, the words written by Rostopchin after the burning of his "delightful home."

"Frenchmen, I have been eight years in embellishing this residence; I have lived in it happily in the bosom of my family. The inhabitants of this estate (amounting to seventeen hundred and twenty) have quitted it at your approach; and I have, with my own hands, set fire to my own house, to prevent it from being polluted by your presence."

"See what one, even one, magnanimous individual can do for his country," exclaimed Beauclerc. "How little did this sacrifice cost him! Sacrifice do I say? it was a pride—a pleasure."

Churchill did not at all like the expression of Helen's countenance, for he perceived she sympathised with Beauclerc's enthusiasm. He saw that romantic enthusiasm had more charm for her than wit or fashion; and now he meditated another change of style. He would try a noble style. He resolved that the first convenient opportunity he would be a little romantic, and perhaps, even take a touch at chivalry, a burst like Beauclerc, but in a way of his own, at the degeneracy of modern times. He tried it—but it was quite a failure; Lady Cecilia, as he overheard, whispered to Helen what was once so happily said—"Ah! le pauvre homme! comme il se batte les flancs d'un enthousiasme de commande."

Horace was too clever a man to persist in a wrong line, or one in which his test of right success did not crown his endeavours. If this did not do, something else would—should, It was impossible that with all his spirit of resource he should ultimately fail. To please, and to make an impression on Helen, a greater impression than Beauclerc—to annoy Beauclerc, in short, was still, independently of all serious thoughts, the utmost object of Churchill's endeavours.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.



VOLUME THE SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

About this time a circumstance occurred, which seemed to have nothing to do with Churchill, or Beauclerc, but which eventually brought both their characters into action and passion.

Lord Davenant had purchased, at the sale of Dean Stanley's pictures, several of those which had been the dean's favourites, and which, independently of their positive merit, were peculiarly dear to Helen. He had ordered that they should be sent down to Clarendon Park; at first, he only begged house-room for them from the general while he and Lady Davenant were in Russia; then he said that in case he should never return he wished the pictures should be divided between his two dear children, Cecilia and Helen; and that, to prevent disputes, he would make the distribution of them himself now, and in the kindest and most playful manner he allotted them to each, always finding some excellent reason for giving to Helen those which he knew she liked best; and then there was to be a hanging committee, for hanging the pictures, which occasioned a great deal of talking, Beauclerc always thinking most of Helen, or of what was really best for the paintings; Horace most of himself and his amateurship.

Among these pictures were some fine Wouvermans, and other hunting and hawking pieces, and one in particular of the duchess and her ladies, from Don Quixote. Beauclerc, who had gone round examining and admiring, stood fixed when he came to this picture, in which he fancied he discovered in one of the figures some likeness to Helen; the lady had a hawk upon her wrist. Churchill came up eagerly to the examination, with glass at eye. He could not discern the slightest resemblance to Miss Stanley; but he was in haste to, bring out an excellent observation of his own, which he had made his own from a Quarterly Review, illustrating the advantage it would be to painters to possess knowledge, even of kinds seemingly most distant from the line of their profession.

"For instance, now a priori, one should not insist upon a great painter's being a good ornithologist, and yet, for want of being something of a bird-fancier, look here what he has done—quite absurd, a sort of hawk introduced, such as never was or could be at any hawking affair in nature: would not sit upon lady's wrist or answer to her call—would never fly at a bird. Now you see this is a ridiculous blunder."

While Churchill plumed himself on this critical remark Captain Warmsley told of who still kept hawks in England, and of the hawking parties he had seen and heard of—"even this year, that famous hawking in Wiltshire, and that other in Norfolk."

Churchill asked Warmsley if he had been at Lord Berner's when Landseer was there studying the subject of his famous hawking scene. "Have you seen it, Lady Cecilia?" continued he; "it is beautiful; the birds seem to be absolutely coming out of the picture;" and he was going on with some of his connoisseurship, and telling of his mortification in having missed the purchase of that picture; but Warmsley got back to the hawking he had seen, and he became absolutely eloquent in describing the sport.

Churchill, though eager to speak, listened with tolerably polite patience till Warmsley came to what he had forgot to mention,—to the label with the date of place and year that is put upon the heron's leg; to the heron brought from Denmark, where it had been caught, with the label of having been let fly from Lord Berner's; "for," continued he, "the heron is always to be saved if possible, so, when it is down, and the hawk over it, the falconer has some raw beef ready minced, and lays it on the heron's back, or a pigeon, just killed, is sometimes used; the hawk devours it, and the heron, quite safe, as soon as it recovers from its fright, mounts slowly upward and returns to its heronry."

Helen listened eagerly, and so did Lady Cecilia, who said, "You know, Helen, our favourite Washington Irving quotes that in days of yore, 'a lady of rank did not think herself completely equipped in riding forth, unless she had her tassel-gentel held by jesses on her delicate hand.'"

Before her words were well finished, Beauclerc had decided what he would do, and the business was half done that is well begun. He was at the library table, writing as fast as pen could go, to give carte blanche to a friend, to secure for him immediately a whole hawking establishment which Warmsley had mentioned, and which was now upon public sale, or privately to be parted with by the present possessor.

At the very moment when Beauclerc was signing and sealing at one end of the room, at the other Horace Churchill, to whom something of the same plan had occurred, was charming Lady Cecilia Clarendon, by hinting to her his scheme—anticipating the honour of seeing one of his hawks borne upon her delicate wrist.

Beauclerc, after despatching his letter, came up just in time to catch the sound and the sense, and took Horace aside to tell him what he had done. Horace looked vexed, and haughtily observed, that he conceived his place at Erlesmede was better calculated for a hawking party than most places in England; and he had already announced his intentions to the ladies. The way was open to him—but Beauclerc did not see why he should recede; the same post might carry both their letters—both their orders!"

"How far did your order go, may I ask?" said Churchill.

"Carte blanche."

Churchill owned, with a sarcastic smile, that he was not prepared to go quite so far. He was not quite so young as Granville; he, unfortunately, had arrived at years of discretion—he said unfortunately; without ironical reservation, he protested from the bottom of his heart he considered it as a misfortune to have become that slow circumspect sort of creature which looks before it leaps. Even though this might save him from the fate of the man who was in Sicily, still he considered it as unfortunate to have lost so much of his natural enthusiasm.

"Natural enthusiasm!" Beauclerc could not help repeating to himself, and he went on his own way. It must be confessed, as even Beauclerc's best friends allowed, counting among them Lady Davenant and his guardian, that never was man of sense more subject to that kind of temporary derangement of the reasoning powers which results from being what is called bit by a fancy; he would then run on straight forward, without looking to the right or the left, in pursuit of his object, great or small. That hawking establishment now in view, completely shut out, for the moment, all other objects; "of tercels and of lures he talks;" and before his imagination were hawking scenes, and Helen with a hawk on her wrist, looking most graceful—a hawk of his own training it should be. Then, how to train a hawk became the question. While he was waiting for the answer to his carte blanche, nothing better, or so good, could be done, as to make himself master of the whole business, and for this purpose he found it essential to consult every book on falconry that could be found in the library, and a great plague he became to everybody in the course of this book-hunt.

"What a bore!" Warmsley might be excused for muttering deep and low between the teeth. General Clarendon sighed and groaned. Lady Davenant bore and forebore philosophically—it was for Beauclerc; and to her great philosophy she gave all the credit of her indulgent partiality. Lady Cecilia, half-annoyed yet ever good-natured, carried her complaisance so far as to consult the catalogue and book-shelves sundry times in one hour; but she was not famous for patience, and she soon resigned him to a better friend—Helen, the most indefatigable of book-hunters. She had been well trained to it by her uncle; had been used to it all her life; and really took pleasure in the tiresome business. She assured Beauclerc it was not the least trouble, and he thought she looked beautiful when she said so. Whosoever of the male kind, young, and of ardent, not to say impatient, spirit, has ever been aided and abetted in a sudden whim, assisted, forwarded, above all, sympathised with, through all the changes and chances of a reigning fancy, may possibly conceive how charming, and more charming every hour, perhaps minute, Helen became in Beauclerc's eyes. But, all in the way of friendship observe. Perfectly so—on her part, for she could not have another idea, and it was for this reason she was so much at her ease. He so understood it, and, thoroughly a gentleman, free from coxcombry, as he was, and interpreting the language and manners of women with instinctive delicacy, they went on delightfully. Churchill was on the watch, but he was not alarmed; all was so undisguised and frank, that now he began to feel assured that love on her side not only was, but ever would be, quite out of the question.

Beauclerc was, indeed, in the present instance, really and truly intent upon what he was about; and he pursued the History of Falconry, with all its episodes, from the olden time of the Boke of St. Alban's down to the last number of the Sporting Magazine, including Colonel Thornton's latest flight, with the adventures of his red falcons, Miss M'Ghee and Lord Townsend, and his red tercels, Messrs. Croc Franc and Craignon;—not forgetting that never-to-be forgotten hawking of the Emperor Arambombamboberus with Trebizonian eagles, on the authority of a manuscript in the Grand Signior's library.

Beauclerc had such extraordinary dependence upon the sympathy of his friends, that, when he was reading any thing that interested him, no matter what they might be doing, he must have their admiration for what charmed him. He brought his book to Lord Davenant, who was writing a letter." Listen, oh listen! to this pathetic lament of the falconer,—'Hawks, heretofore the pride of royalty, the insignia of nobility, the ambassador's present, the priest's indulgence, companion of the knight, and nursling of the gentle mistress, are now uncalled-for and neglected.'"

"Ha! very well that," said good-natured Lord Davenant, stopping his pen, dipping again, dotting, and going on.

Then Beauclerc passaged to Lady Davenant, and, interrupting her in Scott's Lives of the Novelists, on which she was deeply intent, "Allow me, my dear Lady Davenant, though you say you are no great topographer, to show you this, it is so curious; this royal falconer's proclamation—Henry the Eighth's—to preserve his partridges, pheasants, and herons, from his palace at Westminster to St. Giles's in the Fields, and from thence to Islington, Hampstead, and Highgate, under penalty for every bird killed of imprisonment, or whatever other punishment to his highness may seem meet."

Lady Davenant vouchsafed some suitable remark, consonant to expectation, on the changes of times and places, and men and manners, and then motioned the quarto away with which motion the quarto reluctantly complied; and then following Lady Cecilia from window to window, as she tended her flowers, he would insist upon her hearing the table of precedence for hawks. She, who never cared for any table of precedence in her life, even where the higher animals were concerned, would only undertake to remember that the merlin was a lady's hawk, and this only upon condition, that she should have one to sit upon her wrist like the fair ladies in Wouvermans' pictures. But further, as to Peregrine, Gerfalcon, or Gerkin, she would hear nought of them, nor could she listen, though Granville earnestly exhorted, to the several good reasons which make a falcon dislike her master—

1st. If he speak rudely to her. 2nd. If he feed her carelessly.

Before he could get thirdly out, Lady Cecilia stopped him, declaring that in all her life she never could listen to any thing that began with first and secondly—reasons especially.

Horace, meanwhile, looked superior down, and thought with ineffable contempt of Beauclerc's little skill in the arts of conversation, thus upon unwilling ears to squander anecdotes which would have done him credit at some London dinner.

"What I could have made of them! and may make of them yet," thought he; "but some there are, who never can contrive, as other some cleverly do, to ride their hobby-horses to good purpose and good effect;—now Beauclerc's hobbies, I plainly see, will always run away with him headlong, cost him dear certainly, and, may be, leave him in the mire at last."

What this fancy was to cost him, Beauclerc did not yet know. Two or three passages in the Sporting Magazine had given some hints of the expense of this "most delectable of all country contentments," which he had not thought it necessary to read aloud. And he knew that the late Lord Orford, an ardent pursuer of this "royal and noble" sport, had expended one hundred a-year on every hawk he kept, each requiring a separate attendant, and being moreover indulged in an excursion to the Continent every season during moulting-time: but Beauclerc said to himself he had no notion of humouring his hawks to that degree; they should, aristocratic birds though they be, content themselves in England, and not pretend to "damn the climate like a lord." And he flattered himself that he should be able to pursue his fancy more cheaply than any of his predecessors; but as he had promised his guardian that, after the indulgence granted him in the Beltravers' cause, he would not call upon him for any more extraordinary supplies, he resolved, in case the expense exceeded his ways and means, to sell his hunters, and so indulge in a new love at the expense of an old one.

The expected pleasure of the first day's hawking was now bright in his imagination; the day was named, the weather promised well, and the German cadgers and trainers who had been engaged, and who, along with the whole establishment, were handed over to Beauclerc, were to come down to Clarendon Park, and Beauclerc was very happy teaching the merlins to sit on Lady Cecilia's and on Miss Stanley's wrist. Helen's voice was found to be peculiarly agreeable to the hawk, who, as Beauclerc observed, loved, like Lear, that excellent thing in woman, a voice ever soft, gentle, and low.

The ladies were to wear some pretty dresses for the occasion, and all was gaiety and expectation; and Churchill was mortified when he saw how well the thing was likely to take, that he was not to be the giver of the fete, especially as he observed that Helen was particularly pleased—when, to his inexpressible surprise, Granville Beauclerc came to him, a few days before that appointed for the hawking-party, and said that he had changed his mind, that he wished to get rid of the whole concern—that he should be really obliged to Churchill if he would take his engagement off his hands. The only reason he gave was, that the establishment would altogether be more than he could afford, he found he had other calls for money, which were incompatible with his fancy, and therefore he would give it up.

Churchill obliged him most willingly by taking the whole upon himself, and he managed so to do in a very ingenious way, without incurring any preposterous expense. He was acquainted with a set of rich, fashionable young men, who had taken a sporting lodge in a neighbouring county, who desired no better than to accede to the terms proposed, and to distinguish themselves by giving a fete out of the common line, while Churchill, who understood, like a true man of the world, the worldly art of bargaining, contrived, with off-hand gentleman-like jockeying, to have every point settled to his own convenience, and he was to be the giver of the entertainment to the ladies at Clarendon Park. When this change in affairs was announced, Lady Cecilia, the general, Lady Davenant, and Helen, were all, in various degrees, surprised, and each tried to guess what could have been the cause of Beauclerc's sudden relinquishment of his purpose. He was—very extraordinary for him—impenetrable: he adhered to the words "I found I could not afford it." His guardian could not believe in this wonderful prudence, and was almost certain "there must be some imprudence at the bottom of it all."

Granville neither admitted nor repelled that accusation. Lady Cecilia worked away with perpetual little strokes, hoping to strike out the truth, but, as she said, you might as well have worked at an old flint. Nothing was elicited from him, even by Lady Davenant; nor did the collision of all their opinions throw any light upon the matter.

Meanwhile the day for the hawking-party arrived. Churchill gave the fete, and Beauclerc, as one of the guests, attended and enjoyed it without the least appearance even of disappointment; and, so far from envying Churchill, he assisted in remedying any little defects, and did all he could to make the whole go off well.

The party assembled on a rising ground; a flag was displayed to give notice of the intended sport; the falconers appeared, picturesque figures in their green jackets and their long gloves, and their caps plumed with herons' feathers—some with the birds on their wrists—one with the frame over his shoulder upon which to set the hawk. Set, did we say?—no: "cast your hawk on the perch" is, Beauclerc observed, the correct term; for, as Horace sarcastically remarked, Mr. Beauclerc might be detected as a novice in the art by his over-exactness; his too correct, too attic, pronunciation of the hawking language. But Granville readily and gaily bore all this ridicule and raillery, sure that it would neither stick nor stain, enjoying with all his heart the amusement of the scene—the assembled ladies, the attendant cavaliers; the hood-winked hawks, the ringing of their brass bells; the falconers anxiously watching the clouds for the first appearance of the bird; their skill in loosening the hoods, as, having but one hand at liberty, they used their teeth to untie the string:——And now the hoods are off, and the hawks let fly.

They were to fly many castes of hawks this day; the first flight was after a curlew; and the riding was so hard, so dangerous, from the broken nature of the ground, that the ladies gave it up, and were contented to view the sport from the eminence where they remained.

And now there was a question to be decided among the sportsmen as to the comparative rate of riding at a fox chase, and in "the short, but terrifically hard gallop, with the eyes raised to the clouds, which is necessary for the full enjoyment of hawking;" and then the gentlemen, returning, gathered round the ladies, and the settling the point, watches in hand, and bets depending, added to the interest of flight the first, and Churchill, master of the revels, was in the highest spirits.

But presently the sky was overcast, the morning lowered, the wind rose, and changed was Churchill's brow; there is no such thing as hawking against the wind—that capricious wind!

"Curse the wind!" cried Churchill; "and confusion seize the fellow who says there is to be no more hawking to-day!"

The chief falconer, however, was a phlegmatic German, and proper-behaved, as good falconers should be, who, as "Old Tristram's booke" has it, even if a bird should be lost, he should never swear, and only say, "Dieu soit loue," and "remember that the mother of hawks is not dead."

But Horace, in the face of reason and in defiance of his German counsellors, insisted upon letting fly the hawks in this high wind; and it so fell out that, in the first place, all the terms he used in his haste and spleen were wrong; and in the next, that the quarry taking down the wind, the horsemen could not keep up with the hawks: the falconers in great alarm, called to them by the names they gave them—"Miss Didlington," "Lord Berners." "Ha! Miss Didlington's off;—off with Blucher, and Lady Kirby, and Lord Berners, and all of 'em after her." Miss Didlington flew fast and far, and further still, till she and all the rest were fairly out of sight—lost, lost, lost!

"And as fine a caste of hawks they were as ever came from Germany!"—the falconers were in despair, and Churchill saw that the fault was his; and it looked so like cockney sportsmanship! If Horace had been in a towering rage, it would have been well enough; but he only grew pettish, snappish, waspish: now none of those words ending in ish become a gentleman; ladies always think so, and Lady Cecilia now thought so, and Helen thought so too, and Churchill saw it, and he grew pale instead of red, and that looks ugly in an angry man.

But Beauclerc excused him when he was out of hearing; and when others said he had been cross, and crosser than became the giver of a gala, Beauclerc pleaded well for him, that falconry has ever been known to be "an extreme stirrer-up of the passions, being subject to mischances infinite."

However, a cold and hot collation under the trees for some, and under a tent for others, set all to rights for the present. Champagne sparkled, and Horace pledged and was pledged, and all were gay; even the Germans at their own table, after their own fashion, with their Rhenish and their foaming ale, contrived to drown the recollection of the sad adventure of the truant hawks.

And when all were refreshed and renewed in mind and body, to the hawking they went again. For now that

"The wind was laid, and all their fears asleep,"

there was to be a battle between heron and hawk, one of the finest sights that can be in all falconry.

"Look! look! Miss Stanley," cried Granville; "look! follow that high-flown hawk—that black speck in the clouds. Now! now! right over the heron; and now she will canceleer—turn on her wing, Miss Stanley, as she comes down, whirl round, and balance herself—chanceler. Now! now look! cancelleering gloriously!"

But Helen at this instant recollected what Captain Warmsley had said of the fresh-killed pigeon, which the falconer in the nick of time is to lay upon the heron's back; and now, even as the cancelleering was going on—three times most beautifully, Helen saw only the dove, the white dove, which that black-hearted German held, his great hand round the throat, just raised to wring it. "Oh, Beauclerc, save it, save it!" cried Lady Cecilia and Helen at once.

Beauclerc sprang forward, and, had it been a tiger instead of a dove, would have done the same no doubt at that moment; the dove was saved, and the heron killed. If Helen was pleased, so was not the chief falconer, nor any of the falconers, the whole German council in combustion! and Horace Churchill deeming it "Rather extraordinary that any gentleman should so interfere with other gentlemen's hawks."

Lady Cecilia stepped between, and never stepped in vain. She drew a ring from her finger—a seal; it was the seal of peace—no great value—but a well-cut bird—a bird for the chief falconer—a guinea-hen, with its appropriate cry, its polite motto, "Come back, come back;" and she gave it as a pledge that the ladies would come back another day, and see another hawking; and the gentlemen were pleased, and the aggrieved attendant falconers pacified by a promise of another heron from the heronry at Clarendon Park; and the clouded faces brightened, and "she smoothed the raven down of darkness till it smiled," whatever that may mean; but, as Milton said it, it must be sense as well as sound.

At all events, in plain prose, be it understood that every body was satisfied, even Mr. Churchill; for Beauclerc had repaired for him, just in time, an error which would have been a blot on his gallantry of the day. He had forgotten to have some of the pretty grey hairs plucked from the heron, to give to the ladies to ornament their bonnets, but Beauclerc had secured them for him, and also two or three of those much-valued, smooth, black feathers, from the head of the bird, which are so much prized that a plume of them is often set with pearls and diamonds. Horace presented these most gracefully to Lady Cecilia and Helen, and was charmed with Lady Cecilia's parting compliments, which finished with the words "Quite chivalrous."

And so, after all the changes and chances of weather, wind, and humour, all ended well, and no one rued the hawking of this day.



CHAPTER II.

"But all this time," said Lady Davenant, "you have not told me whether you have any of you found out what changed Granville's mind about this falconry scheme—why he so suddenly gave up the whole to Mr. Churchill. Such a point-blank weathercock turn of fancy in most young men would no more surprise me than the changes of those clouds in the sky, now shaped and now unshaped by the driving wind; but in Granville Beauclerc there is always some reason for apparent caprice, and the reason is often so ingeniously wrong that it amuses me to hear it; and even as a study in human nature, I am curious to know the simple fact."

But no one could tell the simple fact, no one could guess his reason, and from him it never would have been known—never could have been found out, but from a mistake—from a letter of thanks coming to a wrong person.

One morning, when Helen was sitting in Lady Davenant's room with her, Lord Davenant came in, reading a letter, like one walking in his sleep.

"What is all this, my dear? Can you explain it to me? Some good action of yours, I suppose, for which I am to be thanked."

Lady Davenant looked at the letter. She had nothing to do with the matter, she said; but, on second thoughts, exclaimed, "This is Granville Beauclerc's doing, I am clear!"

The letter was from Count Polianski, one of the poor banished Poles; now poor, but who had been formerly master of a property estimated at about one hundred and sixty-five thousand available individuals. In attempting to increase the happiness and secure the liberty of these available individuals, the count had lost every thing, and had been banished from his country—a man of high feeling as well as talents, and who had done all he could for that unhappy country, torn to pieces by demagogues from within and tyrants from without.

Lady Davenant now recollected that Beauclerc had learned from her all this, and had heard her regretting that the circumstances in which Lord Davenant was placed at this moment, prevented the possibility of his affording this poor count assistance for numbers of his suffering fellow-countrymen who had been banished along with him, and who were now in London in the utmost distress. Lady Davenant remembered that she had been speaking to Granville on this subject the very day that he had abandoned his falconry project. "Now I understand it all," said she; "and it is like all I know and all I have hoped of him. These hundreds a-year which he has settled on these wretched exiles, are rather better disposed of in a noble national cause, than in pampering one set of birds that they may fly at another set."

"And yet this is done," said Lord Davenant, "by one of the much reviled, high-bred English gentlemen—among whom, let the much reviling, low-bred English democrats say what they will, we find every day instances of subscription for public purposes from private benevolence, in a spirit of princely charity to be found only in our own dear England—England with all her faults.'"

"But this was a less ordinary sort of generosity of Granville's," said Lady Davenant,—"the giving up a new pleasure, a new whim with all its gloss fresh upon it, full and bright in his eye."

"True," said Lord Davenant; "I never saw a strong-pulling fancy better thrown upon its haunches."

The white dove, whose life Helen had saved, was brought home by Beauclerc, and was offered to her and accepted. Whether she had done a good or a bad action, by thus saving the life of a pigeon at the expense of a heron, may be doubted, and will be decided according to the several tastes of ladies and gentlemen for herons or doves. As Lady Davenant remarked, Helen's humanity (or dove-anity, as Churchill called it,) was of that equivocal sort which is ready to destroy one creature to save another which may happen to be a greater favourite.

Be this as it may, the favourite had a friend upon the present occasion, and no less a friend than General Clarendon, who presented it with a marble basin, such as doves should drink out of, by right of long prescription.

The general feared, he said, "that this vase might be a little too deep—dangerously perhaps——."

But Helen thought nothing could be altogether more perfect in taste and in kindness—approving Beauclerc's kindness too—a remembrance of a day most agreeably spent. Churchill, to whom she looked, as she said the last words, with all becoming politeness, bowed and accepted the compliment, but with a reserve of jealousy on the brow; and as he looked again at the dove, caressing and caressed, and then at the classic vase—he stood vexed, and to himself he said,—

"So this is the end of all my pains—hawking and all 'quite chivalrous!' Beauclerc carries off the honours and pleasures of the day, and his present and his dove are to be all in all. Yet still," continued he to himself in more consolatory thought—"she is so open in her very love for the bird, that it is plain she has not yet any love for the man. She would be somewhat more afraid to show it, delicate as she is. It is only friendship—honest friendship, on her side; and if her affections be not engaged somewhere else—she may be mine: if—if I please—if—I can bring myself fairly to propose—we shall see—I shall think of it."

And now he began to think of it seriously.—Miss Stanley's indifference to him, and the unusual difficulty which he found in making any impression, stimulated him in an extraordinary degree. Helen now appeared to him even more beautiful than he had at first thought her—"Those eyes that fix so softly," thought he, "those dark eyelashes—that blush coming and going so beautifully—and there is a timid grace in all her motions, with that fine figure too—and that high-bred turn of the neck!—altogether she is charming! and she will be thought so!—she must be mine!"

She would do credit to his taste; he thought she would, when she had a little more usage du monde, do the honours of his house well; and it would be delightful to train her!—If he could but engage her affections, before she had seen more of the world, she might really love him for his own sake—and Churchill wished to be really loved, if possible, for his own sake; but of the reality of modern love he justly doubted, especially for a man of his fortune and his age; yet, with Helen's youth and innocence he began to think he had some chance of disinterested attachment, and he determined to bring out for her the higher powers of his mind—the better parts of his character.

One day Lady Davenant had been speaking of London conversation. "So brilliant," said she, "so short-lived, as my friend Lady Emmeline K—— once said, 'London wit is like gas, which lights at a touch, and at a touch can be extinguished;'" and Lady Davenant concluded with a compliment to him who was known to have this "touch and go" of good conversation to perfection.

Mr. Churchill bowed to the compliment, but afterwards sighed, and it seemed an honest sigh, from the bottom of his heart. Only Lady Davenant and Helen were in the room, and turning to Lady Davenant he said,

"If I have it, I have paid dearly for it, more than it is worth, much too dearly, by the sacrifice of higher powers; I might have been a very different person from what I am."

Helen's attention was instantly fixed; but Lady Davenant suspected he was now only talking for effect. He saw what she thought—it was partly true, but not quite. He felt what he said at the moment; and besides, there is always a sincere pleasure in speaking of one's self when one can do it without exposing one's self to ridicule, and with a chance of obtaining real sympathy.

"It was my misfortune," he said, "to be spoiled, even in childhood, by my mother."

As he pronounced the word "mother," either his own heart or Helen's eyes made him pause with a look of respectful tenderness. It was cruel of a son to blame the fond indulgence of a mother; but the fact was, she brought him too forward early as a clever child, fed him too much with that sweet dangerous fostering dew of praise. The child—the man—must suffer for it afterwards.

"True, very true," said Lady Davenant; "I quite agree with you."

"I could do nothing without flattery," continued he, pursuing the line of confession which he saw had fixed Lady Davenant's attention favourably. "Unluckily, I came too early into possession of a large fortune, and into the London world, and I lapped the stream of prosperity as I ran, and it was sweet with flattery, intoxicating, and I knew it, and yet could not forbear it. Then in a London life every thing is too stimulating—over-exciting. If there are great advantages to men of science and literature in museums and public libraries, the more than Avicenna advantages of having books come at will, and ministering spirits in waiting on all your pursuits—there is too much of every thing except time, and too little of that. The treasures are within our reach, but we cannot clutch; we have, but we cannot hold. We have neither leisure to be good, nor to be great: who can think of living for posterity, when he can scarcely live for the day? and sufficient for the day are never the hours thereof. From want of time, and from the immense quantity that nevertheless must be known, comes the necessity, the unavoidable necessity of being superficial."