I don't
like the accent, which one cannot get, without speaking through one's
nose; I don't like the eternal fuss and jabber about books without
nature, and revolutions without fruit; I have no sympathy with tales
that turn on a dead jackass, nor with constitutions that give the ballot
to the representatives, and withhold the suffrage from the people;
neither have I much faith in that enthusiasm for the _beaux arts_, which
shows its produce in execrable music, detestable pictures, abominable
sculpture, and a droll something that I believe the _French_ call
POETRY. Dancing and cookery,--these are the arts the French excel in, I
grant it; and excellent things they are; but oh, England! oh, Germany!
you need not be jealous of your rival!"

These are not the author's remarks,--he disowns them; they were Mr.
Cleveland's. He was a prejudiced man; Maltravers was more liberal, but
then Maltravers did not pretend to be a wit.

Maltravers had been several weeks in the city of cities, and now he had
his apartments in the gloomy but interesting Faubourg St. Germain, all
to himself. For Cleveland, having attended eight days at a sale, and
having moreover ransacked all the curiosity shops, and shipped off
bronzes and cabinets, and Genoese silks and _objets de vertu_, enough to
have half furnished Fonthill, had fulfilled his mission, and returned
to his villa. Before the old gentleman went, he flattered himself that
change of air and scene had already been serviceable to his friend;
and that time would work a complete cure upon that commonest of all
maladies,--an unrequited passion, or an ill-placed caprice.

Maltravers, indeed, in the habit of conquering, as well as of concealing
emotion, vigorously and earnestly strove to dethrone the image that had
usurped his heart. Still vain of his self-command, and still worshipping
his favourite virtue of Fortitude and his delusive philosophy of the
calm Golden Mean, he would not weakly indulge the passion, while he so
sternly fled from its object.

But yet the image of Evelyn pursued,--it haunted him; it came on him
unawares, in solitude, in crowds. That smile so cheering, yet so
soft, that ever had power to chase away the shadow from his soul; that
youthful and luxurious bloom of pure and eloquent thoughts, which was
as the blossom of genius before its fruit, bitter as well as sweet, is
born; that rare union of quick feeling and serene temper, which forms
the very ideal of what we dream