On the following day, Andrews, the artisan from the north, appeared at the cottage. He was a young, quiet, alert man, with a shrewd and bold countenance. As he drew near to the bench on which Collins sat in the garden, his face and manner had an expression of much respect for the recluse. He stated who he was, and Collins begged he would sit down by him on the bench under the old elm, from which there was an extensive view down the valley to the sea, now glistening under the warm evening light. Andrews told his story clearly and earnestly, though at rather unnecessary length, and ended by asking Collins's opinion whether he and his friends ought to support Everard.

"What political object is it," said Collins, "that you and your friends want to gain ?”

"We want to take away all unjust distinctions, to have every man paid according to the worth of his labour, and not to see the rich made and kept rich by robbery, and the poor made and kept poor by being robbed."

"Do you want, then, a new distribution of all property? For, if so, I see no result certain, but, in the first place, that the country will be thrown into confusion, all trade stopped, and millions starved; and, secondly, that the distributors would provide very well for themselves and their friends, whatever might become of others."

"No, we do not want that. But we want all the privileges of the rich done away, so that every man may have a fair chance.'

39

"There is no privilege of theirs half so important as that which gives a man's property to his own children, instead of throwing it into a common stock. Would you do that away?"

"No. I would only deprive a man's family of property which he had obtained unjustly."

"In that case the courts of law are meant to set the thing right. They do not perform their work very well, to be sure. Perhaps you want them mended. But if they were improved, do you think there are many of you who could make out a claim to houses and estates?"

"Perhaps not. But could there not be taxes taken off?"

"Oh, no doubt there could. A rich country is sure to spend a deal of money foolishly, much as a rich man is. But suppose every thing of that kind were done, and that you, each of you, had twenty per cent a-year more than you now have, do you believe you would be satisfied? Think a little before you answer."

It is

"No; I do not believe we should. We are on the watch and stirring, and feeling forward for some great change. I do not suppose we should be contented so long as we saw things going on in the main as they are now, even if we had a little more money. the notion of being treated unjustly and kept down that galls us. We want more equality. We see that we work hard and have little pleasure, while others do not work at all, and have a great deal. I cannot make the thing clear. But I am sure there is something wrong somewhere."

"So am I. I never can believe it right that a farthing of money should be wasted in folly and nonsense with which any real good could be done. But how could you change the thing? That is the question. If we took half the property of the rich away to-morrow, and gave it to the poor, then,-to say nothing of the general confusion, the scrambling and fighting, and the lasting insecurity for all,-half of that sum would be spent within a week again; and the country would, I believe in my conscience, be worse off in every way than it is now."

"Why, you are talking just like the people we consider our worst enemies. Yet I suppose you are not pleased with things as they are, and I should like to know what do you want done?"

"Men never have been satisfied, and never will be. But one goes on trying to mend a little here and a little there, till the hour of ruin comes, and the building falls, and buries at once mason and scaffolding. Such is the story of the world. There is a black element of evil in and about us all, and the utmost we can do is to thrust it down, and cover it over for a while. It inevitably breaks out at last, and perhaps there most violently where it has been most vigorously and longest suppressed. We may smooth over the mis

chief, paint it, gild it, bedizen it for a time; but it burns through again at last, and looks the ghastlier for all our gaudy attempts at hiding it. Talk, fancy, hug ourselves as we will, evil is not good, nor can be. He who sees most clearly is most assured of this, and suffers the most from his knowledge that it is so. Any man, therefore, who looks forward to a state of things in which he shall be contented, is walking about in search of a child's swaddling-clothes that will fit his fullgrown frame. The fact of his walking about is the best evidence that the thing is impossible. To seek contentment, in fact, is as hopeless as to try to recover a lost limb. Those only have it who never have thought about it. The moment we feel that we wish for it, we may be certain that it is gone for ever. Do not talk to me of aiming at happiness. Children, too, desire the stars. Leave such prate to those who have no more serious knowledge or objects. Men who have grappled with the hard and sharp realities of life should be wiser and graver.”

Andrews felt cowed by his energy, and said, timidly," Do not all men seek happiness? Is it possible for us to desire any thing else?"

"That is one of the absurd phrases we find in books. No man could have said it who had looked into himself. All men sometimes seek for happiness, as they sometimes crave for food, that is, when they are hungry. But most of our wishes are directed to some end with which happiness has no more to do than quenching the thirst has to do with the drunkard's lust of gin. What he thirsts for is liquid drunkenness. Excitement is the object of three-fourths of most men's wishes, and of the other fourth, repose. Excitement, though it should rend our flesh, and fill our brains with fire. Repose, though it should weigh on, and besiege us with nightmare. And so the world goes on by laws that unfailingly work out good and evil in their due and unalterable proportion."

"What, then, do we strive for at all?" "Oh, the evil is only kept down from mastering all, and trampling out the last spark of good, by human effort unceasing, wearing, agonizing effort, which, after all, realizes little, though it prevents much, and inevitably destroys the drudging champions. We thrust our limbs, our wives, our child

ren, into the midst of the grinding machinery of destiny which is crushing the universe to powder, and so we a little clog and retard the movement by the hindrance of our own flesh and blood. This may seem a small thing to do. But it is all man can do, and that for us is much. If this is all we must look to, I doubt if it be worth while to care for any thing but eating and drinking."

"What! not worth while to bind oppressors in their own chains, and fill up with their own names the blank warrants which they keep signed, as if forejudging all mankind; not worth while to be ministers, even if bleeding and groaning ones, of retribution; to become serpents under the feet that would trample us as worms; to call out energies and knowledge, painful inmates of every breast, but which are accompanied by the feeling of added dignity and power? We cannot, indeed, strive successfully with fate, or teach others to do so, but we can tear off our and their bandages, and unbind millions of arms, and prevent men from perishing fettered and with closed eyes. We can meet our inevitable doom with the aspect, at least, of freedom and heroism. Is this not worth while?"

"If so, it can only be because life itself is nothing. But to beings such as we nothings are mighty. Knowledge, imagination, freedom, courage, power, these may be awakened and spread among mankind, and to do this is the only task worth living for. These cannot be diffused equally, for men are not equally capable of them. Sparrows will still be sparrows; and hawks, hawks. But the sparrows need no more be caged and blinded, than the hawks hooded and subjugated and starved. It is little that the best can at last attain to, but the only feeling worth possessing is that of having done our utmost, and confronted the iron gaze of necessity with as bold and calm an eye as can belong to man."

"But for the present what should our course be?"

"Meddle with no political parties. Their maxims and enterprises are all utterly worthless. Those who flatter you do it only to cheat you; except those who begin by cheating themselves, and fancy that somehow or other they will at each next trial throw seven with a die which has but six

Then

faces. Mankind have been hoping the same thing for at least four thousand years. But when you find a brave, quiet, heroic man-who tells you of your faults not of your virtues, and makes no promises of doing good, but has already fought with resolute despair against powerful evil, cling to him, help him, redden his flag with your heart's blood, if it be necessary, for if he renders you no other service, he has at least given you the costliest of boons, truth, which his future failures cannot deprive you of. But when you see bullies, sycophants, flatterers, liars, spaniels, apes, peacocks, jewel-snouted swine,-men who gorge themselves with garbage, and bribe you with the remains of it, -do not ask what party they are of; be sure that they are of the devil's family, and so certain of his help as to stand in little need of yours. as to this Mr Everard. Let him eat his mess as he can out of a gilded, perhaps one day a coronetted trough, but do you neither wreath the vessel with flowers, nor throw in your children's food to swell the swinish meal. I will tell you something of him. He is well-spoken, civil, lively, or at least was so before he became a great man. There was then a thin plating of sympathy on the surface of the mass of lead and copper, which the world has, I suppose, by this time worn away. A man whom I know, knew him in the youth of both, and became intimate with him. Everard's father possessed a large income, and brought up his son expensively, but died and left him without a farthing. His friend had about £400 a year of his own, and, with the careless profusion of his age, at once settled half of this on Everard, who sold the annuity, and began to push his fortune with the capital thus obtained. Soon afterwards his benefactor was ruined by the failure of a commercial house, and left penniless. Everard was certainly not bound to refund the money, which, indeed, he could not; but his friend might have expected kindness and consolation from him, and met instead with coldness and neglect, and at last was compelled to turn his back, and vow he never again would seek an interview with a spirit so akin to the dirtiest of kennels. Now I do not say that such a man may not be useful to a political party; on the contrary, I think him likely to be specially serviceable for

many purposes, and I am sure he will rise, as there is no service for which he will not exact full payment. He will coin his inmost heart to mud where mud is the required currency. But what can those who think of man not of parties, of truth not of speeches, in short, of hard rude realities, not of fluent liquid dirt, what can such persons have to do with a thing like him? Oh, my friend, whatever else you are, lord or bishop, artist or slave, do not give up being a man. Do not let your manhood slip through your fingers while you are plotting, voting, speechmaking, working. A stage hero, who pretends to be what he is not, is but like the snuff of a candle compared with the stage candle-snuffer, who wears no tinsel armour, and mouths no blank verse, but honestly earns the bread he eats by making the tallowcandles burn. A mere scheming statesman is but a white paper, full of mire, tied up with a red tape, and sealed with the king's seal. And so with all other trades and pretensions. Have nothing to do with them. Stand up openly for truth, and all true men; and let this, and this only, be your creed and your party. Though you will often be trampled on, and will be ground at last, as we must all be, to that dust which the strong wind of time blows away before it, you will at least not be the dupe of others, and, best of all, you will not dupe yourself."

"But is there no party which honestly seeks what is right?"

"I do not know. But I shall believe there is, I shall believe there is some conscience and heart under all the trash and parade of laws and government, when I see any body of men not slightly and occasionally, but with their whole souls and sinews, standing up for the necessity of educating the people. If any one of these men found a son who had been stolen away in infancy, and had grown up among beggars and thieves, knowing and caring for nothing but gluttony and drunkenness, the first thing he would do would be to put him in the hands of some one who would cultivate the man, which lurks, however closely, within the human beast, and so, in the phrase of society, to fit him for his station in the world. That is what I want to have every man fitted as well as art, and pains, and money, and energy, and conscience can do it, for

his station in the world.

man who is to carry on this work-love, intelligence, energetic will-and, beside these, practical skill and expe rience. When I see men possessed of these qualities sought for by a government more earnestly than men seek for diamonds, wooed more fondly than boys woo their sweethearts, rewarded more munificently than rich men pay the physician who prolongs their lives, and keeps them from Satan for another week; when I see such men found, for found they will be if they are sought, and appointed as the friends, and guides, and wiser parents of every poor man's child in the country, I shall think a new age is begun for England, and that new hopes have dawned upon us. Make earnestness on this point your test of every politician who falls in your way, and you will not go far wrong. It is mere cowardly falsehood to pretend that doubt of the amount of good thus attainable is a reason against trying, for it is the only way to do any good at all. A man's whole business on earth as to his own existence is to cultivate himself, and his whole business as to others is to cultivate them."

But what is the station? It is that of a being at the very summit of nature, and looking up from thence, however dimly, to some God who embodies, though perhaps vaguely and weakly, all of highest conception man can know. This is the station not of Reginald and Marmaduke, not of Jack and Tom, not of the prince and the baron, or the ploughman, the blacksmith, and the parish-foundling, but of every human creature; and it is for this station that he ought to be trained. To train him for this is in truth the only business, and not merely the chief one, of all laws, and all society, and yet it is the one which is the least earnestly thought of. Fleets, armies, tribunals, parliaments, sovereignties, palaces, and gaols, are but the rude frame. work round the space in which this work is to be carried on. But it is not to be done by drilling, and compressing, and carving, and stamping words upon the living, fervent, sensitive-oh, how keenly sensitive !-spirit, as if it were a plate of metal on a death-coffin, and not the subtle blazing life, likest of all things in this vast universe to the God whom these vile tinkers of the soul profess to worship. There are three things requisite in every

"I fear," said Andrews, with a smile, "Mr Everard is not our man."

A day had passed after the departure of Andrews, when Collins went on one of his long walking expeditions about the hills, and on his return, towards evening, found himself near the Mount, which was the name of the house occupied by Mr and Mrs Nugent. As he passed under the pailing of a small wood, which lay at the back of the gardens, Maria was entering a little gate into the enclosure, and, after their first greetings, she asked Collins to accompany her. He complied, and they walked side by side on the path which wound among the trees. For a long time he looked about him with rather an eager and anxious expression of countenance, and at last he said "How strange it seems to me that I am in this place! Your mother used to speak to me of it as furnishing some of the pleasantest recollections of her childhood. And now, after many years, I am walking in it with you, her daughter. When I first thought

of fixing myself in some solitude in the country, I believe I was led to choose these heathy hills and retired valleys from the remembrance of the way in which your mother used to describe them to me. Such seemingly slender links bind indissolubly together the past and the future-and I do not regret that I have come here. If it were only that I so keep fresh my image of her, I should be much the gainer. No one can again be to me what she was, for the benefits she rendered me can no more be repeated than the restoration to sight of a blind man, which is done once and for ever. I was young, ignorant of all but a few books and a few men, and my own passions and conceits, and had no opportunity of familiarizing myself with human existence in any wide field. I well recall the arrogant reliance on my own infallibility, which was mingled in me with the weakest bashfulness, and secret dread of every one knowing more of the world, and hav

ing more of its manners, than I. But I became acquainted with your mother, and I shall never forget the impression made on me by her composed self-possessed benignity. At her house I saw not, perhaps, much of society, but far more than I have ever seen elsewhere; and little by little I learned to suppress something of my self-conceit, and at the same time to take an easy footing among others. I found, indeed, little that I could fully and deeply reverence, and the more I lived the more strongly I felt that she was a really noble, generous, true spirit, cramped and dimmed in an ungenial sphere. But yet she kept her heart alive, and wakened and warmed the hearts of others, so far as they had any relics or germs in them susceptible of the process. I remember as if it were but this morning, that nearly the last time I saw her, and when she was very weak and ill, but with an expression of divine calm and clearness, she questioned me about an acquaintance of her's and mine-a woman. This was a person of great talents and brilliant eloquence, and a kind of large and glowing Italian beauty, with whom I had become intimate. She had restless feelings, always craving more and more excitement, insatiable vanity, ready and warm sympathy, and an imaginative delight in nature, the fine arts, and all the more graceful and the bolder forms of human character. Her presence and conversation wrought on me like a sweet intoxicating odour much as I can conceive the influence of Walsingham might on a womanyoung and susceptible as I then was. Your mother saw through all this, warned me, said- That way lies guilt, shame, weakness, remorse, selfcontempt. At the very best,' she continued, go live and grow in that luscious hot-house air, and although your leaves may spread for a time more richly, and your fruit appear to ripen faster, how will you be fit to meet the storms, the cold, the changes of hardy and austere nature? Draw back in time. Perhaps she does not mean to dupe you; but if so, yet assuredly, with your help, she will dupe both herself and you. Your fresh high heart, and daring will, and pictorial fancy, are too new and shining realities not to win and command her. But do not waste yourself in adding another chapter to her overstrained

romance of life.' Partly circumstances, but partly, I hope, also this advice, saved me from the danger. And it was at the hour when I heard of my adviser's death that I vowed never again to meet my siren, at least till years and events should have altered our relative positions. I kept my vow. It was but one of many services that your mother rendered me at a time when most of my acquaintances were only staring at me, or shrinking from me.

They had, in general, no more feeling for me as a living suffering human heart, suffering from its own confusions, more bitterly than any of those whom I annoyed,-no more, I say, than if I had been a thing painted on canvass only to be gazed at. And a very unattractive sign it would have been in the eyes of most people for any tavern in London, though not quite so obnoxious as I should be now where I am known. But if you consider how I must feel as to your mother, you will not wonder that I have been speaking in this way to you, her daughter, as if I had a right to receive your confidence, or at least to give you mine."

Maria listened with deep interest to this remarkable discourse, and only started and coloured a little at the mention of Walsingham, the allusion to whom she could not misunderstand. Indeed, she even fancied that Collins's whole object had perhaps been to suggest to her his view of the poet's character, and of the danger to be apprehended from him. But she forgave him the more readily because she felt herself secure. At the same time, as Collins went on to speak of her mother, her eyes filled slowly with silent tears, one of which, as she turned and looked earnestly at him, fell upon his hand. He, too, looked at her, and his voice softened and faltered before he made an end of speaking.

Maria said, after some moments,"I am very much obliged to you for speaking to me as you have done. My

my dear mother, I am sure, loved you, and it would be a great happiness to me to believe that you give me any portion of the regard which you felt for her."

"You cannot be to me what your mother was. I cannot feel as I did then. If I told you otherwise I should be lying, for compliments are only lies in court-clothes. I would as lief