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long and ardently, but in vain (let not the failure be without its lesson), to rise above her humbling superciliousness of manner. Alas! I could not, and I may say with truth, that the carpings of the petty-minded, the contempt of the contemptible, have been to me infinitely more galling than the censures of the virtuous and the wise. Oh, the mean of heart! when they have an advantage over any of their fellowcreatures, how they will make it felt and known!

"As a last and only resource, I was compelled to send my dear girls to school, and happy indeed was I to learn that Miss Leonard had been received as partner in one of the first respectability. The pain of parting with them was thus considerably lessened, but their departure made a sad blank in our lives.

"The daily interest and positive occupation occasioned by their presence had been, in some degree, restraints on a too great, because useless, susceptibility to our situationto little incidents full of mortification, that were perpetually occurring. Utterly insignificant in themselves, separately considered, but proving together an aggregate of evil too powerful for the strongest arguments we could either of us oppose to it.

"Of this interest and employment we were now deprived, and gradually and insensibly we both became more alive to every annoyance that we could ascribe to our position in society. We were not only at this period of our lives more vulnerable to every attack from without, my dear Hamond, but the voice from within that never had been, and never could be silenced, spoke harsher discords and more severe upbraidings.

"The more I felt my own bereavement of fame (for an unsullied name is such to him who has no other), the more frequently did I think of Cressingham. The idea of him was painful to me, even to horror; but every thought, every reflection now turned unbidden towards him, and dwelt upon the nature of his feelings towards me. I asked my own heart if I could have pardoned such an injury,-it honestly answered no and further, that it ought not to be pardoned. Every other mortal wrong I believed myself capable of forgiving-but not this. No; I could not deceive myself-my nature could not have borne that what I most dearly loved should be made a fixed figure for the hand of scorn,'—it

would have called aloud for vengeance, and appealed to Heaven for aid..

"Am I wrong in thus unveiling to you, my son, as far as they can be unveiled, the most secret workings of my heart? -I think not, for some of them have been most severe and painful inflictions.

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"We have both read and applauded the Allemagne' of Madame de Stael. I remember well, two years ago, your pointing out one passage to me as strikingly new and sublime. It took too strong a hold of your imagination for you to have forgotten it, but I will nevertheless quote it here. Quelle situation,' that wonderful writer, qu'un retour vers la vertu, quand la destinée est irrevocable. Il manquait aux tourmens de l'enfer d'être habité par une ame redevenue sensible.' How little did you think, my dear Hamond, of the close application of this passage to the condition of my feelings, and I may add, my conscience too!--for, oh! Hamond (if it be not presumptuous so to speak) I had made this step towards virtue, I had suffered on this earth the torments of une ame redevenue sensible!' Would that I could tell, for the benefit of others, what that condition is! But, as I believe I have before said, it is not possible. Man has some set words indicative of anguish, guilt, and misery. He utters them, and obtains credence, and perhaps sympathy, for all that his hearer can comprehend; but the dead could as easily reveal to the living the secrets of the tomb, as a living being can disclose to another all the agonies of one paroxysm of remorse.

"From the convulsed countenance-from the altered frame, we may learn something of the strength of its power; but from the lips or from the pen, never!

"Dante said he found the materials for his 'Inferno' in the world we inhabit; I am enabled from the strife of my own nature to comprehend tortures imagined by genius, but smiled at, or unthought of, by the world at large."

CHAPTER XIV.

A high ambition lowly laid.

MR. LANGHAM'S MS. CONTINUED.

"I WILL not, if I can avoid it, my dear Hamond, again' wander from the incidents of my life: I go back to that period when the irritability of my mind, increased by being compelled to part with my daughters, forced me to exert myself to the utmost, lest discontent should make me unkind to their mother! I was difficult to please: the most trifling occurrence excited my severity: I could feel, that sourness of temper was becoming habitual to me, and that not to upbraid her, who but for me had never deserved upbraiding, was a difficult, if not an impossible task. Yes; my high ambition was indeed shrunk. My spirit, which had yearned after, and been blest by noble impulses, was now confined within the narrow but most necessary limits of guarding against quarrelling with my wife! Every soaring thought was turned inward, every ardent aspiration checked; for I was obliged to bend all the powers of my mind to the performance of that which should have been spontaneous, and which when done had neither glory, honour, nor satisfaction,-success itself being a reproach.

"As our daughters grew up, we became naturally anxious that they should have the advantage of society. Yet, as long as exclusion was their mother's lot, I knew it must be theirs also. I had but one female friend in the world on whom I had the slightest claim. This was Lady Everard, and I was tempted by the remote hope of her countenance to purchase Langham Court, it being, as you know, within a few miles of her residence. In vain, however, did we look for her ladyship's visit: Lord Everard called on me alone. I knew the neighbourhood would follow her ladyship's example ;--I knew too that her family owed me some obligations, and I persuaded myself that a solicitation from he would not be unavailing. I humbled myself, therefore,

to write to her and beg that she would visit my wife? F stated to her my parental solicitude, the perfect innocence of my children: I told her, that, like the arch-murderer, the unjust,' who slew the just,' I felt I had branded the foreheads of my children with shame. I besought her as a prisoner would beg for liberty, a condemned felon for life--I promised her unceasing and unbounded gratitude; but I prayed and promised in vain!

"The refusal will not surprise you, Hamond, because you are not aware, as I was, that Lady Everard's conduct had not been such as to entitle her, on the score of virtue, to refuse the boon I asked. If it had, her answer would not, I think, have wounded me so much. But to be refused by a woman not entitled to refuse, was more than the humility, which I trusted I had gained, was equal to. Her letter was not only a refusal,-it was an insult, and written coldly, selfishly, and offensively; for in it she consented to call occasionally at Langham Court on my daughters, if she might be guarantied from seeing their mother! To this proposal I returned the honestly indignant answer which my heart prompted me to send. No: however great her faults to others, that mother had been true to me; and I would not have planted another dagger in her already lacerated bosom, even to have purchased for my children a whole life of happiness.

"Your mother never knew of my application to Lady Everard, and was therefore spared the twofold mortification of her refusal and proposal..

"What is called retributive justice does, I know, too often fall on woman from the hand that ought to be the most forward in sheltering her from it. Of all the varied species of ingratitude, this is perhaps the basest and the worst. On this head my conscience acquits me; for in the long and dismal catalogue of gloomy and comfortless days in which I could not render your poor mother happy, I find no accusing record of forgetfulness or unkindness.

"While I had been vainly endeavouring to secure the society of Lady Everard, Mrs. Langham, unknown to me, had made a similar but more successful application to Mrs. Crosbie. The letter which promised us a visit from this lady and her daughter, was soon followed by their arrival. The girls were coheiresses, and Mrs. Crosbie herself was a rich

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widow it is not, therefore, much to be wondered at, that their society was of some use to us; that it occasioned a formal exchange of visits with a few families in the neighbourhood, desirous of forming rich matrimonial alliances. But these visits were few and far between; and to me, when I once ascertained Mrs. Crosbie's motive for travelling a hundred miles annually to see us, wholly undelightful. I therefore, who valued elegant and intellectual society as one of the highest pleasures of this life, rarely saw any persons in my large and splendid dwelling, but such as were in some way or other dependent upon me. How often, my dear son, in the midst of my own abundance, did I feel

• An exile amid splendid desolation;
A prisoner with infinity surrounded.'

My agent, who thought his wife honoured by our invitations, gladly brought her to Langham Court. My lawyer also brought his; and if I had requested the favour, I do not think my apothecary would have refused me the pleasure of receiv ing his family. Do not mistake me, Hamond,—I wanted not respect for any of these individuals; on the contrary, I felt for them a perfect esteem; and had they come with others, their society would have given me no pain. But, when I reflected that my family was nearly reduced to such and such alone, I found myself sunk in the scale of creation. It was therefore painful for me to receive them; not, I hope, from any undue share of pride (I mean, of course, pride of birth and station in society), or illiberal and ungentlemanly prejudice, but from the perverting and subduing nature of the circumstances in which I was placed. I endeavoured always to treat them as my equals; but I also always remembered they were my inferiors, with a narrow and despicable tenaciousness for which I loathed myself. Mrs. Crosbie's

acquaintance, I think I have said, was valuable to us, (alas! that it should have been so!) for she had that footing in society which we had not. But she had nothing else, as you well know, to recommend her, or even to make her endurable. Deficient in education, in natural feeling, in generosity, and in sympathy, her company was the heaviest penance to which I could be doomed. Her ideas were so limited, that few subjects interested her; and those few, when you were

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