She yet seeks to renew her youth's broken romance. When women begin to feel youth and their beauty Slip from them, they count it a sort of duty

To let nothing else slip away unsecured

Which these, while they lasted, might once have procured.

Lucile's a coquette to the end of her fingers,

I will stake my last farthing. Perhaps the wish lin

gers

To recall the once reckless, indifferent lover

To the feet he has left; let intrigue now recover

What truth could not keep. "Twere a vengeance, no doubt

A triumph;-but why must you bring it about?

You are risking the substance of all that you schemed To obtain; and for what? some mad dream you have dream'd!

ALFRED.

But there's nothing to risk. You exaggerate, Jack. You mistake. In three days, at the most, I am back.

JOHN.

Ay, but how? . . . discontented, unsettled, upset,
Bearing with you a comfortless twinge of regret ;
Pre-occupied, sulky, and likely enough

To make your betroth'd break off all in a huff.

Three days, do you say? But in three days who knows

What may happen? I don't, nor do you, I suppose.

V.

Of all the good things in this good world around us,

The one most abundantly furnish'd and found us,
And which, for that reason, we least care about,
And can best spare our friends, is good counsel, no
doubt.

But advice, when 'tis sought from a friend (though civility.

May forbid to avow it), means mere liability

In the bill we already have drawn on Remorse,
Which we deem that a true friend is bound to endorse.
A mere lecture on debt from that friend is a bore.
Thus, the better his cousin's advice was, the more
Alfred Vargrave with angry resentment opposed it.
And, having the worst of the contest, he closed it
With so firm a resolve his bad ground to maintain,
That, sadly perceiving resistance was vain,
And argument fruitless, the amiable Jack
Came to terms, and assisted his cousin to pack
A slender valise (the one small condescension
Which his final remonstrance obtain'd), whose dimen-
sion

Excluded large outfits; and, cursing his stars, he
Shook hands with his friend and return'd to Miss
Darcy.

VI.

Lord Alfred, when last to the window he turn'd,
Ere he lock'd up and quitted his chamber, discern'd
Matilda ride by, with her cheek beaming bright
In what Virgil has call'd Youth's purpureal light'
(I like the expression, and can't find a better).
He sigh'd as he look'd at her. Did he regret her?
In her habit and hat, with her glad golden hair,

As airy and blithe as a blithe bird in air,

And her arch rosy lips, and her eager blue eyes,
With their little impertinent look of surprise,

And her round youthful figure, and fair neck, below
The dark drooping feather, as radiant as snow,-
I can only declare, that if I had the chance
Of passing three days in the exquisite glance
Of those eyes, or caressing the hand that now petted
That fine English mare, I should much have regretted
Whatever might lose me one little half-hour

Of a pastime so pleasant, when once in my power.
For, if one drop of milk from the bright Milky Way
Could turn into a woman, 'twould look, I dare say,
Not more fresh than Matilda was looking that day.

VII.

But, whatever the feeling that prompted the sigh
With which Alfred Vargrave now watch'd her ride by,
I can only affirm that, in watching her ride,

As he turn'd from the window, he certainly sigh'd.

CANTO II.

I.

LETTER FROM LORD ALFRED VARGRAVE TO THE COMTESSE DE NEVERS.

'Bigorre, Tuesday.

'YOUR note, Madam, reach'd me to-day, at Bigorre, 'And commands (need I add ?) my obedience. Before 'The night I shall be at Serchon-where a line, 'If sent to Duval's, the hotel where I dine,

'Will find me, awaiting your orders.

Receive

'My respects.

'Yours sincerely,

A. VARGRAVE.

'I leave

'In an hour.'

II.

In an hour from the time he wrote this,

Alfred Vargrave, in tracking a mountain abyss,
Gave the rein to his steed and his thoughts, and
pursued,

In pursuing his course through the blue solitude,
The reflections that journey gave rise to.

And here

(Because, without some such precaution, I fear

You might fail to distinguish them each from the rest
Of the world they belong to; whose captives are drest,
As our convicts, precisely the same one and all,
While the coat cut for Peter is pass'd on to Paul)
I resolve, one by one, when I pick from the mass
The persons I want, as before you they pass,
To label them broadly in plain black and white
On the backs of them.

sight,

I first label my hero.

Therefore whilst yet he's in

III.

The age is gone o'er

When a man may in all things be all. We have more
Painters, poets, musicians, and artists, no doubt,
Than the great Cinquecento gave birth to; but out
Of a million of mere dilettanti, when, when

Will a new LEONARDO arise on our ken?

He is gone with the age which begat him. Our own
Is too vast, and too complex, for one man alone
To embody its purpose, and hold it shut close
In the palm of his hand. There were giants in those
Irreclaimable days; but in these days of ours,
In dividing the work, we distribute the powers.
Yet a dwarf on a dead giant's shoulders sees more
Than the 'live giant's eyesight avail'd to explore;
And in life's lengthen'd alphabet what used to be
To our sires X Y Z is to us A B C.

A Vanini is roasted alive for his pains,

But a Bacon comes after and picks up his brains.
A Bruno is angrily seized by the throttle
And hunted about by thy ghost, Aristotle,