leared and purified. When people, whether as
electors or candidates (or, as in the case of Jane Melville, even those
who are neither), take an exaggerated view of the trouble, expense, and
annoyance attending the discharge of public duty, and form a low
estimate of the good that each honest energetic individual can do to
his country by using every means in his power to secure good
government, to promote public spirit, and to raise the standard of
political morality, the country is on the decline. It may grow rich, it
may increase in national prosperity, but, as a nation, it wants the
soul of national life and national freedom. I prefer Jane Melville's
rather unreasonable hopes to the pusillanimous fears--the LASSEZ FAIRE
policy of those who think they know the world far better, and who
believe the game of public life is not worth the cost of the candle
that lights it up.

If she had been the only woman in the world, or the only woman likely
to suit Francis, and to make him happy, she would have felt very
differently; but surely he could have no difficulty in finding, among
the hundreds of thousands of marriageable women in Great Britain, some
one as likely (she even thought, more likely), to satisfy his heart
than herself. It was only because circumstances had made him know her
so well, and because he had been so intimately connected with no one
else, that he believed he loved her. He was a man whom any woman might
easily learn to love; and if she steadily held out to him that she was
only his dear sister--his faithful friend, and that she could never be
anything else, he would ere long form a tenderer tie. But she hoped and
wished that his lot might be cast with a good woman, who would not
grudge her the secondary place that she felt she could not give up. She
tried to convince herself that it could be only friendship really on
his part; but he had been so unused to affectionate friendships,
especially with one of the other sex, that he was very likely to
mistake his feelings.

The state of her own heart she did not like to look into very closely;
she knew that Francis was inexpressibly dear to her, but the absolute
absence of all jealousy made her doubt if it were really what is called
love. She could look forward without pain to another person becoming
more to him than herself. My readers will think that if it had been
really love, it would have forced itself upon her, and burst through
all the barriers that were l