"Eugene, dear, dear Eugene!" murmured Madeline soothingly, and wrestling
with her tears, "is not your gain great? is it no triumph that you stand,
while yet young, almost alone in the world, for success in all that you
have attempted?"

"And what," exclaimed Aram, breaking in upon her, "what is this world
which we ransack, but a stupendous charnel-house? Every thing that we
deem most lovely, ask its origin?--Decay! When we rifle nature, and
collect wisdom, are we not like the hags of old, culling simples from the
rank grave, and extracting sorceries from the rotting bones of the dead?
Every thing around us is fathered by corruption, battened by corruption,
and into corruption returns at last. Corruption is at once the womb and
grave of Nature, and the very beauty on which we gaze and hang,--the
cloud, and the tree, and the swarming waters,--all are one vast panorama
of death! But it did not always seem to me thus; and even now I speak
with a heated pulse and a dizzy brain. Come, Madeline, let us change the
theme."

And dismissing at once from his language, and perhaps, as he proceeded,
also from his mind, all of its former gloom, except such as might shade,
but not embitter, the natural tenderness of remembrance, Aram now
related, with that vividness of diction, which, though we feel we can
very inadequately convey its effect, characterised his conversation, and
gave something of poetic interest to all he uttered; those reminiscences
which belong to childhood, and which all of us take delight to hear from
the lips of any one we love.

It was while on this theme that the lights which the deepening twilight
had now made necessary, became visible in the Church, streaming afar
through its large oriel window, and brightening the dark firs that