extent; but the rich subtleties of thought which mark the cold and bright
page of the Comus; the noble Platonism--the high and rare love for what is
abstractedly good, these were not "sonorous and trumpet-speaking" enough
for the heart of one meant by Nature for a heroine or a queen, not a
poetess or a philosopher.

But all that in literature was delicate, and half-seen, and abstruse, had
its peculiar charm for Godolphin. Of a reflective and refining mind, he
had early learned to despise the common emotions of men: glory touched him
not, and to ambition he had shut his heart. Love, with him--even though
he had been deemed, not unjustly, a man of gallantry and pleasure--love
was not compounded of the ordinary elements of the passions. Full of
dreams, and refinements, and intense abstractions, it was a love that
seemed not homely enough for endurance, and of too rare a nature to hope
for sympathy in return.

And so it was in his intercourse with Constance, both were continually
disappointed. "You do not feel this," said Constance. "She cannot
understand me," sighed Godolphin.

But we must not suppose--despite his refinements, and his reveries, and
his love for the intellectual and the pure--that Godolphin was of a
stainless character or mind. He was one who, naturally full of decided
and marked qualities, was, by the peculiar elements of our society,
rendered a doubtful, motley, and indistinct character, tinctured by the
frailties that leave us in a wavering state between vice and virtue. The
energies that had marked his boyhood were dulled and crippled in the
indolent life of the world. His wandering habits for the last few
years--the soft and poetical existence of the South--had fed his natural
romance, and nourished that passion for contemplation which the