first came up to London, I made the same choice that I hear you have
done. I have no cause, even in a worldly point of view, to repent my
choice. It gave me an income larger than my wants. I trace my success
to these maxims, which are applicable to all professions: 1st, Never
to trust to genius for what can be obtained by labour; 2dly, Never to
profess to teach what we have not studied to understand; 3dly, Never to
engage our word to what we do not our best to execute.

"With these rules, literature--provided a man does not mistake his
vocation for it, and will, under good advice, go through the preliminary
discipline of natural powers, which all vocations require--is as good a
calling as any other. Without them, a shoeblack's is infinitely better."

"Possibly enough," muttered Harley; "but there have been great writers
who observed none of your maxims."

"Great writers, probably, but very unenviable men. My Lord, my Lord,
don't corrupt the pupil you bring to me." Harley smiled, and took his
departure, and left Genius at school with Common-Sense and Experience.

CHAPTER XX.

While Leonard Fairfield had been obscurely wrestling against poverty,
neglect, hunger, and dread temptation, bright had been the opening day
and smooth the upward path of Randal Leslie. Certainly no young
man, able and ambitious, could enter life under fairer auspices; the
connection and avowed favourite of a popular and energetic statesman,
the brilliant writer of a political work that had lifted him at once
into a station of his own, received and courted in those highest
circles, to which neither rank nor fortune alone suffices for a familiar
passport,--the circles above fashion itself the circles of POWER,--with
every facility of augmenting information, and learning the world betimes
through the talk of its acknowledged masters,--Randal had but to move
straight onward, and success was sure. But his tortuous spirit delighted
in scheme and intrigue for their own sake. In scheme and intrigue he saw
shorter paths to fortune, if not to fame.

His besetting sin was also his besetting weakness. He did not
aspire,--he coveted. Though in a far higher social position than Frank
Hazeldean, despite the worldly prospects of his old schoolfellow, he
coveted the very things that kept Frank Hazeldean below him,--coveted
his idle gayeties, his careless pleasures, his very waste of youth.
Thus, also, Randal less aspired to Audley Egerton's repute than h