such meaning to the
poet's lightest word;--the fair, false, exciting life that is detailed
before us--crowding into some three little hours all that our most
busy ambition could desire--love, enterprise, war, glory! the kindling
exaggeration of the sentiments which belong to the stage--like our own
in our boldest moments: all these appeals to our finer senses are not
made in vain. Our taste for castle-building and visions deepens upon us;
and we chew a mental opium which stagnates all the other faculties, but
wakens that of the ideal.

Godolphin was peculiarly fascinated by the stage; he loved to steal away
from his companions, and, alone, and unheeded, to feast his mind on the
unreal stream of existence that mirrored images so beautiful. And oh!
while yet we are young--while yet the dew lingers on the green leaf of
spring--while all the brighter, the more enterprising part of the future
is to come--while we know not whether the true life may not be visionary
and excited as the false--how deep and rich a transport is it to see,
to feel, to hear Shakspeare's conceptions made actual, though
all imperfectly, and only for an hour! Sweet Arden! are we in thy
forest?--thy "shadowy groves and unfrequented glens"? Rosalind,
Jaques, Orlando, have you indeed a being upon earth! Ah! this is true
enchantment! and when we turn back to life, we turn from the colours
which the Claude glass breathes over a winter's landscape to the
nakedness of the landscape itself!

CHAPTER IX.

THE LEGACY.--A NEW DEFORMITY IN SAVILLE.--THE NATURE OF WORLDLY
LIAISONS.--GODOLPHIN LEAVES ENGLAND.

But then, it is not always a sustainer of the stage delusion to be
enamoured of an actress: it takes us too much behind the scenes.
Godolphin felt this so strongly that he liked those plays least in which
Fanny performed. Off the stage her character had so little romance, that
he could not deceive himself into the romance of her character before
the lamps. Luckily, however, Fanny did not attempt Shakspeare. She was
inimitable in vaudeville, in farce, and in the lighter comedy; but she
had prudently abandoned tragedy in deserting the barn. She was a girl of
much talent and quickness, and discovered exactly the paths in which her
vanity could walk without being wounded. And there was a simplicity, a
frankness, about her manner, that made her a most agreeable companion.

The attachment between her and Godolphin was not very violent; it was a
silken t