he fought no battle. He had been dead-beaten from his boyhood.
Like the old Spanish Governor, the walls of whose fortress had been
thrown down by an earthquake, and who painted streets to deceive the
enemy, he was rendered safe enough by his astuteness, except against a
traitor from within.

One who goes on doggedly enduring, doggedly doing his best, must subsist
on comfort of a kind that is likely to be black comfort. The mere piping
of the musical devil shall not suffice. In Sir Purcell's case, it had
long seemed a magnanimity to him that he should hold to a life so
vindictively scourged, and his comfort was that he had it at his own
disposal. To know so much, to suffer, and still to refrain, flattered his
pride. "The term of my misery is in my hand," he said, softened by the
reflection. It is our lowest philosophy.

But, when the heart of a man so fashioned is stirred to love a woman, it
has a new vital force, new health, and cannot play these solemn pranks.
The flesh, and all its fatality, claims him. When Sir Purcell became
acquainted with Cornelia, he found the very woman his heart desired, or
certainly a most admirable picture of her. It was, perhaps, still more to
the lady's credit, if she was only striving to be what he was learning to
worship. The beneficial change wrought in him, made him enamoured of
healthy thinking and doing. Had this, as a result of sharp mental
overhauling, sprung from himself, there would have been hope for him.
Unhappily, it was dependent on her who inspired it. He resolved that life
should be put on a fresh trial in her person; and expecting that
naturally to fail, of which he had always entertained a base conception,
he was perforce brought to endow her with unexampled virtues, in order to
keep any degree of confidence tolerably steadfast in his mind. The lady
accepted the decorations thus bestowed on her, with much grace and
willingness. She consented, little aware of her heroism, to shine forth
as an 'ideal;' and to this he wantonly pinned his faith. Alas! in our
world, where all things must move, it becomes, by-and-by, manifest that
an 'ideal,' or idol, which you will, has not been gifted with two legs.
What is, then, the duty of the worshipper? To make, as I should say, some
compromise between his superstitious reverence and his recognition of
facts. Cornelia, on her pedestal, could not prefer such a request
plainly; but it would have afforded her exceeding gratification, if the