nding all that we hear said against castle-building, how few
among the unbought pleasures of life are so amusing, nor are we certain
that these shadowy speculations--these "white lies" that we tell to our
own conscience--are not so many incentives to noble deeds and generous
actions. These "imaginary conversations" lift us out of the jog-trot
path of daily intercourse, and call up hopes and aspirations that lie
buried under the heavy load of wearisome commonplaces of which life is
made up, and thus permit a man, immersed as he may be in the fatigues
of a profession, or a counting-house, harassed by law, or worried by
the Three per Cents, to be a hero to his own heart at least for a few
minutes once a week.

But if "castle-building" be so pleasurable when a mere visionary scheme,
what is it when it comes associated with all the necessary conditions
for accomplishment,--when not alone the plan and elevation of the
edifice are there, but all the materials and every appliance to realize
the conception?

Just fancy yourself "two or three and twenty," waking out of a sound and
dreamless sleep, to see the mellow sun of an autumnal morning straining
its rays through the curtains of your bedroom. Conceive the short and
easy struggle by which, banishing all load of cares and duties in which
you were once immersed, you spring, as by a bound, to the joyous fact
that you are the owner of a princely fortune, with health and ardent
spirit, a temper capable of, nay, eager for engagement, a fearless
courage, and a heart unchilled. Think of this, and say, Is not the
first waking half-hour of such thoughts the brightest spot of a whole
existence? Such was the frame of mind in which our hero awoke, and lay
for some time to revel in! We could not, if we would, follow the
complex tissue of day-dreams that wandered over every clime, and in the
luxuriant rapture of power created scenes of pleasure, of ingredients
the most far-fetched and remote. The "actual" demands our attention
more urgently than the "ideal," so that we are constrained to follow the
unpoetical steps of so ignoble a personage as Mr. Phillis,--Cashel's new
valet,--who now broke in upon his master's reveries as he entered with
hot water and the morning papers.

"What have you got there?" cried Cashel, not altogether pleased at the
intrusion.

"The morning papers! Lord Ettlecombe "--his former master, and his
universal type--"always read the 'Post,' sir, before he got out of