your life to
your genius, and try again." Try again! Easy counsel enough to the man
of ready resource and quick combative mind; but to Leonard, how hard
and how harsh! "Fit his life to his genius!"--renounce contemplation and
Nature for the jostle of Oxford Street! Would that life not scare away
the genius forever? Perplexed and despondent, though still struggling
for fortitude, he returns to his home; and there at his hearth awaits
the Soother, and there is the voice that repeats the passages most
beloved, and prophesies so confidently of future fame; and gradually all
around smiles from the smile of Helen. And the profound conviction that
Heaven places human happiness beyond the reach of the world's contempt
or praise, circulates through his system and restores its serene calm.
And he feels that the duty of the intellect is to accomplish and perfect
itself,--to harmonize its sounds into music that may be heard in heaven,
though it wake not an echo on the earth. If this be done, as with some
men, best amidst the din and the discord, be it so; if, as with him,
best in silence, be it so too. And the next day he reclines with Helen
by the seashore, gazing calmly as before on the measureless sunlit
ocean; and Helen, looking into his face, sees that it is sunlit as the
deep. His hand steals within her own, in the gratitude that endears
beyond the power of passion, and he murmurs gently, "Blessed be the
woman who consoles."

The work found its way at length into fame, and the fame sent its voices
loud to the poet's home. But the applause of the world had not a sound
so sweet to his ear, as, when, in doubt, humiliation, and sadness, the
lips of his Helen had whispered "Hope! and believe!"

Side by side with this picture of Woman the Consoler, let me place the
companion sketch. Harley L'Estrange, shortly after his marriage with
Violante, had been induced, whether at his bride's persuasions, or to
dissipate the shadow with which Egerton's death still clouded his wedded
felicity, to accept a temporary mission, half military, half civil, to
one of our colonies. On this mission he had evinced so much ability
and achieved so signal a success, that on his return to England he was
raised to the peerage, while his father yet lived to rejoice that the
son who would succeed to his honours had achieved the nobler dignity
of honours not inherited, but won. High expectations were formed of
Harley's parliamentary success; but he saw that