as well as of the heart, and in old age we feel as much remorse if we
have wasted our natural talents as if we had perverted our natural
virtues. The profound and exultant satisfaction with which a man who
knows that he has not lived in vain--that he has entailed on the world
an heirloom of instruction or delight--looks back upon departed
struggles, is one of the happiest emotions of which the conscience can
be capable. What, indeed, are the petty faults we commit as
individuals, affecting but a narrow circle, ceasing with our own lives,
to the incalculable and everlasting good we may produce as public men by
one book or by one law? Depend upon it that the Almighty, who sums up
all the good and all the evil done by His creatures in a just balance,
will not judge the august benefactors of the world with the same
severity as those drones of society, who have no great services to show
in the eternal ledger, as a set-off to the indulgence of their small
vices. These things rightly considered, Maltravers, you will have every
inducement that can tempt a lofty mind and a pure ambition to awaken
from the voluptuous indolence of the literary Sybarite, and contend
worthily in the world's wide Altis for a great prize."

Maltravers never before felt so flattered--so stirred into high
resolves. The stately eloquence, the fervid encouragement of this man,
usually so cold and fastidious, roused him like the sound of a trumpet.
He stopped short, his breath heaved thick, his cheek flushed. "De
Montaigne," said he, "your words have cleared away a thousand doubts and
scruples--they have gone right to my heart. For the first time I
understand what fame is--what the object, and what the reward of labour!
Visions, hopes, aspirations I may have had before--for months a new
spirit has been fluttering within me. I have felt the wings breaking
from the shell, but all was confused, dim, uncertain. I doubted the
wisdom of effort, with life so short, and the pleasures of youth so