lity; but when the cloud of misfortune lowered over his
house, when difficulties thickened around him, and every effort to
rescue seemed only to plunge him deeper, then the deep-rooted pride of
the man shone forth: and he who in happier days was forgiving even to
a fault, became now scrupulous about every petty observance, exacting
testimonies of respect from all around him, and assuming an almost
tyranny of manner totally foreign to his tastes, his feelings, and
his nature; like some mighty oak of the forest, riven and scathed by
lightning, its branches leafless and its roots laid bare, still standing
erect, it stretches its sapless limbs proudly towards heaven, so stood
he, reft of nearly all, yet still presenting to the adverse wind of
fortune his bold, unshaken front.

Alas and alas! poverty has no heavier evil in its train than its
power of perverting the fairest gifts of our nature from their true
channel,--making the bright sides of our character dark, gloomy, and
repulsive. Thus the high-souled pride that in our better days sustains
and keeps us far above the reach of sordid thoughts and unworthy
actions, becomes, in the darker hour of our destiny, a misanthropic
selfishness, in which we wrap ourselves as in a mantle. The caresses
of friendship, the warm affections of domestic love, cannot penetrate
through this; even sympathy becomes suspect, and then commences that
terrible struggle against the world, whose only termination is a broken
heart.

Notwithstanding, then, all Mr. Rooney's address in conveying the
invitation in question, it was not without a severe struggle that Sir
Simon resolved on its acceptance; and when at last he did accede, it was
with so many stipulations, so many express conditions, that, thad they
been complied with _de facto_, as they were acknowledged by promise,
Miss Bellew would, in all probability, have spent her winter in the
retirement of her own chamber in Stephen's-green, without seeing more of
the capital and its inhabitants than a view from her window presented.
Paul, it is true, agreed to everything; for, although, to use his own
language, the codicil revoked the entire body of the testament, he
determined in his own mind to break the will. "Once in Dublin," thought
he, "the fascinations of society, the pleasures of the world, with such
a guide as Mrs. Rooney"--and here let me mention, that for his wife's
tact and social cleverness Paul had the most heartfelt admiration--"with