such an insignificant being as a man did or left undone in it.
Perhaps he might amuse himself with it, he said, but he doubted
it. As to men, he believed every man loved himself supremely, and
therefore was in natural warfare with every other man. Concerning
women he professed himself unable to give a definite utterance of
any sort--and yet, he would add, he had had opportunities.

The mother of Florimel had died when she was a mere child, and from
that time she had been at school until her father brought her away
to share his fresh honours. She knew little, that little was not
correct, and had it been, would have yet been of small value. At
school she had been under many laws, and had felt their slavery:
she was now in the third heaven of delight with her liberty. But
the worst of foolish laws is, that when the insurgent spirit casts
them off, it is but too ready to cast away with them the genial
self-restraint which these fretting trammels have smothered beneath
them.

Her father regarded her as a child, of whom it was enough to require
that she should keep out of mischief. He said to himself now and
then that he must find a governess for her; but as yet he had not
begun to look for one. Meantime he neither exercised the needful
authority over her, nor treated her as a companion. His was a
shallow nature, never very pleasantly conscious of itself except in
the whirl of excitement, and the glitter of crossing lights: with
a lovely daughter by his side, he neither sought to search into
her being, nor to aid its unfolding, but sat brooding over past
pleasures, or fancying others yet in store for him--lost in
the dull flow of life along the lazy reach to whose mire its once
tumultuous torrent had now descended. But, indeed, what could such