drag on the spirit which it does not assist but fetter, this wretched
machine of pains and aches, and feverish throbbings, and vexed
inquietudes, why, let the worms consume it, and the grave hide--for Fame
there is no grave."

At that moment one of those unfortunate women who earn their polluted
sustenance by becoming the hypocrites of passions abruptly accosted
them.

"Miserable wretch!" said Warner, loathingly, as he pushed her aside; but
Clarence, with a kindlier feeling, noticed that her haggard cheek was
wet with tears, and that her frame, weak and trembling, could scarcely
support itself; he, therefore, with that promptitude of charity which
gives ere it discriminates put some pecuniary assistance in her hand and
joined his comrade.

"You would not have spoken so tauntingly to the poor girl had you
remarked her distress," said Clarence.

"And why," said Warner, mournfully, "why be so cruel as to prolong,
even for a few hours, an existence which mercy would only seek to bring
nearer to the tomb? That unfortunate is but one of the herd, one of the
victims to pleasures which debase by their progress and ruin by their
end. Yet perhaps she is not worse than the usual followers of love,--of
love, that passion the most worshipped, yet the least divine,--selfish
and exacting,--drawing its aliment from destruction, and its very nature
from tears."

"Nay," said Clarence, "you confound the two loves, the Eros and the
Anteros; gods whom my good tutor was wont so sedulously to distinguish:
you surely do not inveigh thus against all love?"

"I cry you mercy," said Warner, with something of sarcasm in his
pensiveness of tone. "We must not dispute; so I will hold my peace: but
make love all you will; what are the false smiles of a lip which a few
years can blight as an autumn leaf? what the homage of a heart as feeble
and mortal as your own? Why, I, with a few strokes of a little hair
and an idle mixture of worthless colours, will create a beauty in whose
mouth there shall be no hollowness, in whose lip there shall be no
fading; there, in your admiration, you shall have no need of flattery
and no fear of falsehood; you shall not be stung with jealousy nor
maddened with treachery; nor watch with a breaking heart over the waning
bloom, and departing health, till the grave open, and your perishable
paradise is not. No: the mimic work is mightier than the original, for
it outlasts it; your love cannot wither it, or your dese