all the ships in the Channel,
ma'am," said I, quite irreverently. I was shocked before the words were
well out of my mouth; and throwing my arms round my mother's neck, I
kissed away the pain I had inflicted.

When I was left alone and in my own little crib, in which my slumber
had ever been so soft and easy, I might as well have been lying upon
cut straw. I tossed to and fro; I could not sleep. I rose, threw on my
dressing-gown, lighted my candle, and sat down by the table near the
window. First I thought of the unfinished outline of my father's youth,
so suddenly sketched before me. I filled up the missing colors,
and fancied the picture explained all that had often perplexed my
conjectures. I comprehended, I suppose by some secret sympathy in my own
nature (for experience in mankind could have taught me little enough),
how an ardent, serious, inquiring mind, struggling into passion under
the load of knowledge, had, with that stimulus sadly and abruptly
withdrawn, sunk into the quiet of passive, aimless study. I comprehended
how, in the indolence of a happy but unimpassioned marriage, with a
companion so gentle, so provident and watchful, yet so little formed
to rouse and task and fire an intellect naturally calm and meditative,
years upon years had crept away in the learned idleness of a solitary
scholar. I comprehended, too, how gradually and slowly, as my father
entered that stage of middle life when all men are most prone to
ambition, the long-silenced whispers were heard again, and the mind, at
last escaping from the listless weight which a baffled and disappointed
heart had laid upon it, saw once more, fair as in youth, the only true
mistress of Genius,--Fame.

Oh! how I sympathized, too, in my mother's gentle triumph. Looking over
the past, I could see, year after year, how she had stolen more and more
into my father's heart of hearts; how what had been kindness had grown
into love; how custom and habit, and the countless links in the sweet
charities of home, had supplied that sympathy with the genial man which
had been missed at first by the lonely scholar.

Next I thought of the gray, eagle-eyed old soldier, with his ruined
tower and barren acres, and saw before me his proud, prejudiced,
chivalrous boyhood, gliding through the ruins or poring over the mouldy
pedigree. And this son, so disowned,--for what dark offence? An awe
crept over me. And this girl,--his ewe-lamb, his all,--was she fair? had
she blue