e of actual existence. Hence the misery of the
imaginative man!--hence his little sympathy with the mass, who, tame
and soulless, look upon life and the things of life, not through the
refining medium of ideality, but through the grossly magnifying optics
of mere sense and materialism.

But, though we could, and perhaps may, at some future period, write
volumes on this subject, we return for the present from a digression
into which we have been insensibly led by the temporary excitement of
our own feelings.

Whatever were the impressions of the young baronet, and however he
might have been inclined to suffer the fair image of the gentle Clara,
such as he was perhaps wont to paint it, to exercise its spell upon his
fancy, certain it is, he never expressed to her brother more than that
esteem and interest which it was but natural he should accord to the
sister of his friend. Neither had Charles de Haldimar, even amid all
his warmth of commendation, ever made the slightest allusion to his
sister, that could be construed into a desire she should awaken any
unusual or extraordinary sentiment of preference. Much and fervently as
he desired such an event, there was an innate sense of decorum, and it
may be secret pride, that caused him to abstain from any observation
having the remotest tendency to compromise the spotless delicacy of his
adored sister; and such he would have considered any expression of his
own hopes and wishes, where no declaration of preference had been
previously made. There was another motive for this reserve on the part
of the young officer. The baronet was an only child, and would, on
attaining his majority, of which he wanted only a few months, become
the possessor of a large fortune. His sister Clara, on the contrary,
had little beyond her own fair fame and the beauty transmitted to her
by the mother she had lost. Colonel de Haldimar was a younger son, and
had made his way through life with his sword, and an unblemished
reputation alone,--advantages he had shared with his children, for the
two eldest of whom his interest and long services had procured
commissions in his own regiment.

But even while Charles de Haldimar abstained from all expression of his
hopes, he had fully made up his mind that Sir Everard and his sister
were so formed for each other, it was next to an impossibility they
could meet without loving. In one of his letters to the latter, he had
alluded to his friend in terms of so hig