e hopes of a crown. Sometimes she remembered that she
had suffered keen anguish, when he hesitated in his choice. But this memory
of past discontent only served to enhance her present joy. What had been
hardly won, was now, entirely possessed, doubly dear. She would look at him
at a distance with the same rapture, (O, far more exuberant rapture!) that
one might feel, who after the perils of a tempest, should find himself in
the desired port; she would hasten towards him, to feel more certain in his
arms, the reality of her bliss. This warmth of affection, added to the
depth of her understanding, and the brilliancy of her imagination, made her
beyond words dear to Raymond.

If a feeling of dissatisfaction ever crossed her, it arose from the idea
that he was not perfectly happy. Desire of renown, and presumptuous
ambition, had characterized his youth. The one he had acquired in Greece;
the other he had sacrificed to love. His intellect found sufficient field
for exercise in his domestic circle, whose members, all adorned by
refinement and literature, were many of them, like himself, distinguished
by genius. Yet active life was the genuine soil for his virtues; and he
sometimes suffered tedium from the monotonous succession of events in our
retirement. Pride made him recoil from complaint; and gratitude and
affection to Perdita, generally acted as an opiate to all desire, save that
of meriting her love. We all observed the visitation of these feelings, and
none regretted them so much as Perdita. Her life consecrated to him, was a
slight sacrifice to reward his choice, but was not that sufficient--Did
he need any gratification that she was unable to bestow? This was the only
cloud in the azure of her happiness.

His passage to power had been full of pain to both. He however attained his
wish; he filled the situation for which nature seemed to have moulded him.
His activity was fed in wholesome measure, without either exhaustion or
satiety; his taste and genius found worthy expression in each of the modes
human beings have invented to encage and manifest the spirit of beauty; the
goodness of his heart made him never weary of conducing to the well-being
of his fellow-creatures; his magnificent spirit, and aspirations for the
respect and love of mankind, now received fruition; true, his exaltation
was temporary; perhaps it were better that it should be so. Habit would not
dull his sense of the enjoyment of power; nor struggles,