ere he had stood several
nights before with Helen, and, dizzy with want of food, and worn out for
want of sleep, he sank down into the dark corner; while the river that
rolled under the arch of stone muttered dirge-like in his ear,--as under
the social key-stone wails and rolls on forever the mystery of Human
Discontent. Take comfort, O Thinker by the stream! 'T is the river that
founded and gave pomp to the city; and, without the discontent, where
were progress, what were Man? Take comfort, O THINKER! wherever the
stream over which thou bendest, or beside which thou sinkest, weary
and desolate, frets the arch that supports thee, never dream that, by
destroying the bridge, thou canst silence the moan of the wave!

CHAPTER XVI.

Before a table, in the apartments appropriated to him in his father's
house at Knightsbridge, sat Lord L'Estrange, sorting or destroying
letters and papers,--an ordinary symptom of change of residence. There
are certain trifles by which a shrewd observer may judge of a man's
disposition. Thus, ranged on the table, with some elegance, but with
soldier-like precision, were sundry little relics of former days,
hallowed by some sentiment of memory, or perhaps endeared solely by
custom; which, whether he was in Egypt, Italy, or England, always made
part of the furniture of Harley's room. Even the small, old-fashioned,
and somewhat inconvenient inkstand into which he dipped the pen as he
labelled the letters he put aside, belonged to the writing-desk which
had been his pride as a schoolboy. Even the books that lay scattered
round were not new works, not those to which we turn to satisfy the
curiosity of an hour, or to distract our graver thoughts; they were
chiefly either Latin or Italian poets, with many a pencil-mark on the
margin; or books which, making severe demand on thought, require slow
and frequent perusal, and become companions. Somehow or other, in
remarking that even in dumb, inanimate things the man was averse to
change, and had the habit of attaching himself to whatever was connected
with old associations, you might guess that he clung with pertinacity to
affections more important, and you could better comprehend the freshness
of his friendship for one so dissimilar in pursuits and character as
Audley Egerton. An affection once admitted into the heart of Harley
L'Estrange seemed never to be questioned or reasoned with; it became
tacitly fixed, as it were, into his own nature, and l