"If you like. I am afraid I shall have nothing to say that will interest you?"

"Not if you tell me about yourself?"

A few days after, Eustace and Honoria set out on their tour, in company with Miss Vyvyan.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Is not short pain well borne, that brings long ease,
And lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave?

SPENSER.

Of the discoveries which our hero made in this excursion, and the reflections which they suggested, his pocket-book, I doubt not, contained abundant records. One was written upon his heart, and therefore ought to be told in this history: it was one which will sound commonplace enough to most readers, but which for him had all the force of novelty, though he had heard it a thousand times proclaimed, because he, for the first time, realized it in his own experience. It was, that there exists in this country a feeling of personality, which is to be found no where else

in any thing like the same strength and efficiency. How grievously this feeling is corrupted-how often lost in an absorbing selfishness, and how many lessons of social kindness and tolerance we might learn from our neighbours, no one saw more clearly than our hero. But that any accompanying evils, unless (and this is the great apprehension, which may well tempt the patriot sometimes to feel for England as a lover or a child) they should cut up the root of which they are the corrupt outgrowths, ought to make us deem the blessing less than the greatest which can belong to a nation, or that any other merits can compensate for the loss of it, he could not believe. He knew all that statists and travellers are wont to say on the other side; he was well acquainted with the miserable documents respecting our jails and our executions; he had been as much 'sickened as any other man by the history of our crim. cons. and seductions; and yet all were unable to convince him that there is not a heart of morality in England which, in spite of a thousand obstructions, sends more healthy streams into the rest of its system, thán circulate through the arteries of any other European kingdom. And when he com pared his own observations (not certainly ren dered unworthy of trust by any previous inclina tion to form them) with the evidence of history,

he became, after a long struggle, deeply impressed with the conviction that those empirical reformers, to whose creed he had once subscribed, are striking at this heart; and, if they accomplished their objects, would aggravate ten-thousand-fold all the glaring mischiefs which furnish the pretext for their innovation. He had seen the supporters of these schemes too near, to feel much dread of the wit and the logic with which they would assail him; and it was, therefore, chiefly an inward resistance-a horror of becoming one of the majority, which withheld him, for a long time, from yielding to his convictions. Some men think it an act of great moral daring, to proclaim their doubts, whether an Aristocracy is not mischievous, and a Church establishment abominable. Eustace Conway endured many a fierce conflict, before he could find courage to acknowledge that either was necessary. To look evidence stedfastly in the face, to grapple with arguments, and not merely to finger them, to abandon what seemed the firmest standing-ground, and balance yourself for a time on feeble twigs, he found was cruel labour: but it grieved him still more to think, that if he did unfortunately adopt the popular conclusion, he would find himself rankand-file with the comfortable pluralists, and grinding landlords; nay, that since every indivi

dual opinion is worth something, he might supply fresh down to pillows which he would like to have sprinkled with thorns, and uphold corruptions which he would fain have seen destroyed by fire from Heaven. He defied all these temptations to stop short of truth, or not to confess it. But when he had achieved the victory, was he in a wholesomer, or more desirable state of mind? I dare not say so; nay, I should scarcely fear to say, that he was in one less wholesome-less desirable. Practically, he had enlarged, not narrowed the circle of his contempt. He had left the seat in which scorners are wont to sit, but he had erected a new one in the holy place. He despised vulgar opinions as before, but he despised their dispisers also. He said to the Liberal,-" Stand by, I am holier than thou art!" he said to the Tory," Stand by, I am wiser than thou art!" He had not the humility of a person who recollects that he has renounced many opinions, but the vanity of one who thinks that he has proved all. He had thought within himself, "How much more deep, sagacious, and sober-minded am I than that man who would have a new dynasty every week, or oftener if need be!" and again, "how totally unlike I am to that snail who crawleth every Sunday to his parish church, and every week-day to his counting-house! Poor Whigs and Radicals! I know