re, and can draw plans. I wish to follow out Sir Philip's
design, but on a smaller scale, and with more attention to comfort."

Thus he continued to run on, satisfied to find me a silent and attentive
listener. We arrived at the mansion an hour before sunset, the westering
light shining full against the many windows cased in mouldering
pilasters, and making the general dilapidation of the old place yet more
mournfully evident.

It was but a few minutes to the dinner-hour. I went up at once to the
room appropriated to me,--not the one I had before occupied. Strahan
had already got together a new establishment. I was glad to find in
the servant who attended me an old acquaintance. He had been in my own
employ when I first settled at L----, and left me to get married. He and
his wife were now both in Strahan's service. He spoke warmly of his
new master and his contentment with his situation, while he unpacked my
carpet-bag and assisted me to change my dress. But the chief object of
his talk and his praise was Mr. Margrave.

"Such a bright young gentleman, like the first fine day in May!"

When I entered the drawing-room, Margrave and Strahan were both there.
The former was blithe and genial, as usual, in his welcome. At dinner,
and during the whole evening till we retired severally to our own rooms,
he was the principal talker,--recounting incidents of travel, always
very loosely strung together, jesting, good-humouredly enough, at
Strahan's sudden hobby for building, then putting questions to me about
mutual acquaintances, but never waiting for an answer; and every now
and then, as if at random, startling us with some brilliant aphorism, or
some suggestion drawn from abstract science or unfamiliar erudition. The
whole effect was sparkling, but I could well understand that, if long
continued, it would become oppressive. The soul has need of pauses of
repose,--intervals of escape, not only from the flesh, but even from the
mind. A man of the loftiest intellect will experience times when
mere intellect not only fatigues him, but amidst its most original
conceptions, amidst its proudest triumphs, has a something trite and
commonplace compared with one of those vague intimations of a spiritual
destiny which are not within the ordinary domain of reason; and, gazing
abstractedly into space, will leave suspended some problem of severest
thought, or uncompleted some golden palace of imperial poetry, to
indulge in hazy reveries,