ecution, and, bitterer than all,
misrepresentation from some and contempt from others, have yet quelled
and tamed. We watch our opportunity; the growing distress of the
country, the increasing severity and misrule of the administration, will
soon afford it us. Your talents, your benevolence, render you worthy to
join us. Do so, and--"

"Hush!" interrupted the student; "you know not what you say: you weigh
not the folly, the madness of your design! I am a man more fallen, more
sunken, more disappointed than you. I, too, have had at my heart the
burning and lonely hope which, through years of misfortune and want, has
comforted me with the thought of serving and enlightening mankind,--I,
too, have devoted to the fulfilment of that hope, days and nights, in
which the brain grew dizzy and the heart heavy and clogged with the
intensity of my pursuits. Were the dungeon and the scaffold my reward
Heaven knows that I would not flinch eye or hand or abate a jot of heart
and hope in the thankless prosecution of my toils. Know me, then, as
one of fortunes more desperate than your own; of an ambition more
unquenchable; of a philanthropy no less ardent; and, I will add, of a
courage no less firm: and behold the utter hopelessness of your projects
with others, when to me they only appear the visions of an enthusiast."

Wolfe sank down in the chair.

"Is it even so?" said he, slowly and musingly. "Are my hopes but
delusions? Has my life been but one idle, though convulsive dream? Is
the goddess of our religion banished from this great and populous earth
to the seared and barren hearts of a few solitary worshippers, whom all
else despise as madmen or persecute as idolaters? And if so, shall we
adore her the less?---No! though we perish in her cause, it is around
her altar that our corpses shall be found!"

"My friend," said Glendower, kindly, for he was touched by the sincerity
though opposed to the opinions of the republican, "the night is yet
early: we will sit down to discuss our several doctrines calmly and in
the spirit of truth and investigation."

"Away!" cried Wolfe, rising and slouching his hat over his bent
and lowering brows; "away! I will not listen to you: I dread your
reasonings; I would not have a particle of my faith shaken. If I err,
I have erred from my birth,--erred with Brutus and Tell, Hampden and
Milton, and all whom the thousand tribes and parties of earth consecrate
with their common gratitude and eternal re