ly rejecting those great principles by which alone we
can work the Science of Life--a desire for the Good, a passion for the
Honest, a yearning after the True. From such principles, Experience,
that severe Mentor, teaches us at length the safe and practical
philosophy which consists of Fortitude to bear, Serenity to enjoy, and
Faith to look beyond!

It would have led, perhaps, to more striking incidents, and have
furnished an interest more intense, if I had cast Maltravers, the Man
of Genius, amidst those fierce but ennobling struggles with poverty and
want to which genius is so often condemned. But wealth and lassitude
have their temptations as well as penury and toil. And for the rest--I
have taken much of my tale and many of my characters from real life, and
would not unnecessarily seek other fountains when the Well of Truth was
in my reach.

The Author has said his say, he retreats once more into silence and into
shade; he leaves you alone with the creations he has called to life--the
representatives of his emotions and his thoughts--the intermediators
between the individual and the crowd. Children not of the clay, but of
the spirit, may they be faithful to their origin!--so should they be
monitors, not loud but deep, of the world into which they are cast,
struggling against the obstacles that will beset them, for the heritage
of their parent--the right to survive the grave!

LONDON, August 12th, 1837.

ERNEST MALTRAVERS.

BOOK I.

"Youth pastures in a valley of its own:
The glare of noon--the rains and winds of heaven
Mar not the calm yet virgin of all care.
But ever with sweet joys it buildeth up
The airy halls of life."
SOPH. _Trachim_. 144-147.

CHAPTER I.

"My meaning in't, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of the
maid * * * * yet, who would have suspected an ambush where I was
taken?"
_All's Well that Ends Well_, Act iv. Sc. 3.

SOME four miles distant from one of our northern manufacturing towns, in
the year 18--, was a wide and desolate common; a more dreary spot it is
impossible to conceive--the herbage grew up in sickly patches from the
midst of a black and stony soil. Not a tree was to be seen in the whole
of the comfortless expanse. Nature herself had seemed to desert the
solitude, as if scared by the ceaseless din of the neighbouring forges;
and even Art, which presses all things into service, had disdained to
cull use or beauty from these unprom