uchsafed gleams of brighter
sentiments, irregular perceptions of moral beauty, denied to the brutal
unreasoning wickedness of uneducated villany,--which perhaps ultimately
serve as his punishment, according to the old thought of the satirist,
that there is no greater curse than to perceive virtue yet adopt
vice. And as the solitary schemer walked slowly on, and his
childhood--innocent at least indeed--came distinct before him through
the halo of bygone dreams,--dreams far purer than those from which he
now rose each morning to the active world of Man,--a profound melancholy
crept over him, and suddenly he exclaimed aloud, "Then I aspired to be
renowned and great; now, how is it that, so advanced in my career, all
that seemed lofty in the end has vanished from me, and the only means
that I contemplate are those which my childhood would have called poor
and vile? Ah, is it that I then read but books, and now my knowledge has
passed onward, and men contaminate more than books? But," he continued,
in a lower voice, as if arguing with himself, "if power is only so to be
won,--and of what use is knowledge if it be not power--does not success
in life justify all things? And who prizes the wise man if he fails?" He
continued his way, but still the soft tranquillity around rebuked him,
and still his reason was dissatisfied, as well as his conscience. There
are times when Nature, like a bath of youth, seems to restore to the
jaded soul its freshness,--times from which some men have emerged, as if
reborn. The crises of life are very silent. Suddenly the scene opened on
Randal Leslie's eyes,--the bare desert common, the dilapidated church,
the old house, partially seen in the dank dreary hollow, into which it
seemed to Randal to have sunken deeper and lowlier than when he saw
it last. And on the common were some young men playing at hockey. That
old-fashioned game, now very uncommon in England, except at schools, was
still preserved in the primitive vicinity of Rood by the young yeomen
and farmers. Randal stood by the stile and looked on, for among the
players he recognized his brother Oliver. Presently the ball was struck
towards Oliver, and the group instantly gathered round that young
gentleman, and snatched him from Randal's eye; but the elder brother
heard a displeasing din, a derisive laughter. Oliver had shrunk from the
danger of the thick clubbed sticks that plied around him, and received
some stroke across the legs, for his