vices she expected from him, but referred him to her husband at his
office for information respecting his promised employment. It was
necessary to know a little more of his temper and disposition before
making him her confidential agent.

The new Cymon, as in one sense the young rustic might be called,
quitted the house in May Fair, filled with vague admiration and
ambition. In the fascinations surrounding Miss Pendarrel, he
recognised a power superior to anything within his experience; and he
framed fantastic expectations from the career he supposed opening
before him. But the lover of Iphigenia had concealed a noble heart
under a rugged exterior, and his passion developed its high qualities.
Michael Sinson was a very different character from Boccaccio's hero.

And was Mercy Page already forgotten?--Happy, perchance, for the too
faithful maiden, if so it were.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Nam veluti pueri trepidant, atque omnia coecis
In tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus
Interdum, nihilo quae sunt metuenda magis, quam
Quae pueri in tenebris pavitant, finguntque futura."

LUCRET.

As children tremble, and in darkness quake
At all things near, so we too sometimes shake
At daylight fancies, vain as those which scare
Children in darkness with foreboding fear.

They were not halcyon days in England that succeeded the termination
of the long struggle for liberty and existence, which, during more
than twenty years, had taxed to the uttermost all the resources of the
country; and which, as a whole, must always be regarded by Britons
with pride and exultation. We had given peace to the world; but we
were unable to preserve tranquillity at home. War is, at the best, a
bad education, if sometimes a necessary one, for a young people; and a
mature nation will find that its costs are not only money and men. It
is a lottery on the grandest scale, both of fortune and life, inducing
waste of the one, and recklessness of the other; removing, therefore,
in a great measure, the vulgar motives of action, and importing a
general laxity of principle. In various ways a long war produces an
intestinal feverishness, aggravating any incidental disorder, and
favourable to the designs of incendiaries.

The peace was followed by a general fall in wages. It was a result
beyond the control of legislation; and it would probably have been
unfelt, if pr