nto the wilderness of publication--that mode of
obtaining fame and hatred to which those who feel unfitted for more
bustling concerns are impelled. Write he might: and he was fond (as
disappointment increased his propensities to dreaming) of brightening
his solitude with the golden palaces and winged shapes that lie glassed
within the fancy--the soul's fairy-land. But the vision with him was
only evoked one hour to be destroyed the next. Happy had it been for
Godolphin, and not unfortunate perhaps for the world, had he learned at
that exact moment the true motive for human action which he afterwards,
and too late, discovered. Happy had it been for him to have learned that
there is an ambition to do good--an ambition to raise the wretched as
well as to rise.

Alas!--either in letters or in politics, how utterly poor, barren, and
untempting, is every path that points upward to the mockery of public
eminence, when looked upon by a soul that has any real elements of wise
or noble; unless we have an impulse within, which mortification chills
not--a reward without, which selfish defeat does not destroy.

But, unblest by one friend really wise or good, spoilt by the world,
soured by disappointment, Godolphin's very faculties made him inert, and
his very wisdom taught him to be useless. Again and again--as the spider
in some cell where no winged insect ever wanders, builds and rebuilds
his mesh,--the scheming heart of the Idealist was doomed to weave net
after net for those visions of the Lovely and the Perfect which can
never descend to the gloomy regions wherein mortality is cast. The most
common disease to genius is nympholepsy--the saddening for a spirit that
the world knows not. Ah! how those outward disappointments which should
cure, only feed the disease!

The dinner at Saville's was gay and lively, as such entertainments with
such participators usually are. If nothing in the world is more heavy
than your formal banquet,--nothing, on the other hand, is more agreeable
than those well-chosen laissez aller feasts at which the guests are as
happily selected as the wines; where there is no form, no reserve, no
effort; and people having met to sit still for a few hours are willing
to be as pleasant to each other as if they were never to meet again. Yet
the conversation in all companies not literary turns upon persons
rather than things; and your wits learn their art only in the School for
Scandal.

"Only think, Fanny," sai