itting the enclosed domain it had forced its way
through some craggy underwood at the bottom of the hilly moors we have
noticed, and finally entering the plain, lost itself in the waters of
the greater stream.

Good sport had not awaited Egremont. Truth to say, his rod had played in
a very careless hand. He had taken it, though an adept in the craft when
in the mood, rather as an excuse to be alone, than a means to be amused.
There are seasons in life when solitude is a necessity; and such a one
had now descended on the spirit of the brother of Lord Marney.

The form of Sybil Gerard was stamped upon his brain. It blended with all
thoughts; it haunted every object. Who was this girl, unlike all women
whom he had yet encountered, who spoke with such sweet seriousness of
things of such vast import, but which had never crossed his mind, and
with a kind of mournful majesty bewailed the degradation of her race?
The daughter of the lowly, yet proud of her birth. Not a noble lady in
the land who could boast a mien more complete, and none of them thus
gifted, who possessed withal the fascinating simplicity that pervaded
every gesture and accent of the daughter of Gerard.

Yes! the daughter of Gerard; the daughter of a workman at a manufactory.
It had not been difficult, after the departure of Sybil, to extract this
information from the garrulous wife of the weaver. And that father,--he
was not unknown to Egremont. His proud form and generous countenance
were still fresh in the mind's eye of our friend. Not less so his
thoughtful speech; full of knowledge and meditation and earnest feeling!
How much that he had spoken still echoed in the heart, and rung in the
brooding ear of Egremont. And his friend, too, that pale man with
those glittering eyes, who without affectation, without pedantry, with
artlessness on the contrary and a degree of earnest singleness, had
glanced like a master of philosophy at the loftiest principles of
political science,--was he too a workman? And are these then THE PEOPLE?
If so, thought Egremont, would that I lived more among them! Compared
with their converse, the tattle of our saloons has in it something
humiliating. It is not merely that it is deficient in warmth, and depth,
and breadth; that it is always discussing persons instead of principles,
and cloaking its want of thought in mimetic dogmas and its want of
feeling in superficial raillery; it is not merely that it has neither
imagination, nor f