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CONVERSATION WITH AN AMBITIOUS
STUDENT IN ILL HEALTH.

I HAVE always loved the old form of dialogue; not, indeed, so much for investigating truth, as for speaking of truths after an easy, yet not an uncritical or hasty fashion. More familiar than the essay, more impressed with the attraction of individual character, the dialogue has also the illustrious examples of old-to associate the class to which it belongs with no common-place or ignoble recollections. It may perhaps be still possible to give to the lighter and less severe philosophy-a form of expression at once dramatic and unpedantic. I have held of late some conversations, that do not seem to me altogether uninteresting, with a man whom I have long considered of a singular and original character. have obtained his permission to make the conversations public: perhaps, of all modes of effecting this object, a periodical work may afford the best. The subjects treated on-the manner of treating them-may not be deemed of sufficient importance for publication in a separate form. Besides, and to say the truth-I have always set a high value on the dignity of a book. It seems to me necessary that a book, be it only a novel, (I say only, in compliance with the vulgar,) should illustrate some great moral end: it should be a maxim brightened into a picture. The conversations I am about to record are far too desultory to realize this character. They are scattered and broken in themselves-scattered and broken be the method of their publication. Perhaps, indeed, they would remain altogether unretailed, were it not for my friend's conviction that the seal is set upon the limit of his days, and did I not see sufficient

evidence in his appearance to forbid me to hope that he can linger many months beyond the present date. To his mind whatever be its capacities, its cultivation, its aspirings, all matured and solid offspring is forbidden. These fugitive tokens of all he acquired, or thought, or felt, are, if we read aright, human probabilities, the sole testimony that he will leave behind him; not a monument, but at least a few leaves, scarcely withered we will hope in one day, upon his grave. I feel a pain in writing the above words, but will he?-No!-or he has wronged himself. He looks from the little inn of his mortality, and anticipates the long summer journey before him; he repines not to-day that he must depart to

morrow.

On Saturday last, November 13th, I rode to L-'s habitation, which is some miles from my own home. The day was cold enough, but I found him in his room, with the windows open, and feeding an old favourite in the shape of a squirrel, that had formerly been a tame companion. L, on arriving at his present abode, had released it; but it came from the little copse in front of the windows every day to see its former master, and to receive some proof of remembrance from his good-natured hospitality.

CONVERSATION THE FIRST.

"After all," said L, "though the short and simple annals of the poor are often miserable enough, no peasant lives so wretched a life as the less noble animals, whom we are sometimes tempted to believe more physically happy. Observe how uneasily this poor wretch looks around him. He is subject to perpetual terror from a large Angola cat, that my housekeeper chooses to retain in our domestic service, and that has twice very nearly devoured my nervous little hermit. In how large a proportion of creatures is existence composed of one ruling passion-the most agonizing of all sensations-fear! No; human life is but a Rembrandt kind of picture at the best; yet we have no cause to think there are brighter colours in the

brute world. Fish are devoured by intestinal worms; birds are subject to continual sickness, some of a very torturing nature. Look at this ant-hill, what a melancholy mockery of our kind-what eternal wars between one hill and another-what wrong-what violence! You know the red ants invade the camps of the black, and bear off the young of these little negroes to be slaves to their victors. When I see throughout all nature the same miseries, the same evil passions, whose effects are crime with us, but whose cause is instinct with the brutes, I confess I fell a sort of despondence of our ultimate doom in this world: I almost feel inclined to surrender the noblest earthly hope that man ever formed, and which is solely the offspring of modern times—the hope of human perfectibility."

A. You have inclined, then, to the eloquent madness of Condorcet and De Stael! You have believed, then, in spite of the countless ages before us, ages in which the great successions of human kind are recorded by the Persian epitome of universal history, "They were born, they were wretched, they died!"-you have believed, despite of so long, so uniform, so mournful an experience, despite, too, our physical conformation, which, even in the healthiest and the strongest, subjects the body to so many afflictions, and, therefore, the temper to so many infirmities-you have believed that we yet may belie the past, cast off the slough of crimes, and gliding into the full light of knowledge, become as angels in the sight of God-you believe, in a word, that even on this earth, by progressing in wisdom, we may progress to perfection.

L. What else does the age we live in betoken? Look around; not an inanimate object, not a block of wood, not a bolt of iron,

"But doth suffer an earth-change

Into something rich and strange."

Wherever man applies his intellect, behold how he triumphs. What marvellous improvements in every art, every ornament, every luxury of life! Why not these

improvements ultimately in life itself? Are we "the very fiend's Archmock," that we can reform every thing, save that which will alone enable us to enjoy our victory-the human heart. In vain we grasp all things without, if we have no command within. No! Institutions are mellowing into a brighter form; with institutions the character will expand: it will swell from the weak bonds of our foibles and our vices; and if we are fated never to become perfect, we shall advance at least, and eternally, towards perfectibility. The world hath had two Saviours-one divine, and one human; the first was the Founder of our religion, the second the propagator of our knowledge. The second, and I utter nothing profane, it ministers to the first-the second is the might of the PRESS. By that, the Father of all safe revolutions, the author of all permanent reforms-by that, man will effect what the first ordained the reign of peace, and the circulation of love among the great herd of man.

A. Our conversation has fallen on a topic graver than usual; but these times give, as it were, a solemn and prophetic tone to all men who think, and are not yet summoned to act. I feel as if I stood behind a veil stretched across another and an unknown world, and waited in expectation, and yet in awe, the hand that was to tear it away.

L. Ay, I envy you at times, (but not always,) the long and bright career, that, for the first time in the world, is opened to a wise man's ambition; you may live to tread it; you have activity and ardour; and, whether you fall or rise, the step forward, you will at least adventure. But I am the bird chained, and the moment my chain is broken, my course is Heavenward, and not destined to the earth. After all, what preacher of human vanities is like the flesh, which is yet their author! Two years ago, my limbs were firm, my blood buoyant-how boundless was my ambition! Now my constitution is gone, and so perish my desires of glory. Let me see, A; you and I entered the world together.

A. Yes, yet with what different tempers.

L. True: you were less versatile, more reserved, more solidly ambitious, than myself; your tone of mind was more solemn, mine more eager; life has changed our dispositions, because it has altered our frames. That was a merry year, our first of liberty and pleasure-but when the sparkle leaves the cup how flat is the draught; society is but the tinkling cymbal, and the gallery of pictures, the moment we discover that there is no love there. What makes us so wise as our follies?—the intrigues, the amours, that degrade us while enacted, enlighten us when they are passed away. We have been led, as it were, by the pursuit of a glittering insect to the summit of a mountain, and we see the land of life stretched below.

A. Yet shall we not exclaim with Boileau,

"Souvent de tous nos maux la raison est le pire?"

These delusions were pleasant

L. To remember-they were wearisome and unprofitable while we actually indulged them; a man plays the game of women with manifold disadvantages if he bring any heart to the contest; if he discover, with Marmontel's Alcibiades, that he has not been really loved, how deeply is he wounded-if he has been really loved how bitterly may he repent. Society is at war with all love except the connubial; and if that passion which is the adventurous-the romantic be not in itself a crime-our laws have made it so.

A. But the connubial love? How beautiful that is in reality, though so uninteresting to behold?

L. It loses its charm with me the moment I remark, what I always do remark, that though the good pair may be very kind to each other on the whole, they have sacrificed respect to that most cruel of undeceivers, custom. They have some little gnawing jest at each other; they have found out every weakness in each other; and, what is worse, they have found out the sting to it. The only interesting, and if I may contradict Rochefoucault, the only delicious marriages are those in which the husband is wise enough to see very little

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