e
very doctrines, so far as his limited sphere would allow, into the rule
and exercise of his life.

Since the death of the bookseller, which we have before recorded,
Glendower had been left utterly without resource. The others to whom he
applied were indisposed to avail themselves of an unknown ability. The
trade of bookmaking was not then as it is now, and if it had been,
it would not have suggested itself to the high-spirited and unworldly
student. Some publishers offered, it is true, a reward tempting enough
for an immoral tale; others spoke of the value of an attack upon the
Americans; one suggested an ode to the minister, and another hinted that
a pension might possibly be granted to one who would prove extortion not
tyranny. But these insinuations fell upon a dull ear, and the tribe of
Barabbas were astonished to find that an author could imagine interest
and principle not synonymous.

Struggling with want, which hourly grew more imperious and urgent;
wasting his life on studies which brought fever to his pulse and
disappointment to his ambition; gnawed to the very soul by the
mortifications which his poverty gave to his pride; and watching with
tearless eyes, but a maddening brain, the slender form of his wife, now
waxing weaker and fainter, as the canker of disease fastened upon the
core of her young but blighted life,--there was yet a high, though,
alas! not constant consolation within him, whenever, from the troubles
of this dim spot his thoughts could escape, like birds released from
their cage, and lose themselves in the lustre and freedom of their
native heaven.

"If," thought he, as he looked upon his secret and treasured work, "if
the wind scatter or the rock receive these seeds, they were at least
dispersed by a hand which asked no selfish return, and a heart which
would have lavished the harvest of its labours upon those who know not
the husbandman and trample his hopes into the dust."

But by degrees this comfort of a noble and generous nature, these
whispers of a vanity rather to be termed holy than excusable, began to
grow unfrequent and low. The cravings of a more engrossing and heavy
want than those of the mind came eagerly and rapidly upon him; the fair
cheek of his infant became pinched and hollow; his wife conquered nature
itself by love, and starved herself in silence, and set bread before him
with a smile and bade him eat.

"But you,--you?" he would ask inquiringly, and then pause.

"