schools, and old ladies in the country; but there was that in the first
sentences of the letter, which he now opened with a careless hand, that
riveted his attention. It was a small and beautiful handwriting, yet
the letters were more clear and bold than they usually are in feminine
caligraphy.

"Ernest Maltravers," began this singular effusion, "have you weighed
yourself? Are you aware of your capacities? Do you feel that for you
there may be a more dazzling reputation that that which appears to
content you? You who seem to penetrate into the subtlest windings of
the human heart, and to have examined nature as through a glass--you,
whose thoughts stand forth like armies marshalled in defence of truth,
bold and dauntless, and without a stain upon their glittering
armour;--are you, at your age, and with your advantages, to bury
yourself amidst books and scrolls? Do you forget that action is the
grand career for men who think as you do? Will this word-weighing and
picture-writing--the cold eulogies of pedants--the listless praises of
literary idlers, content all the yearnings of your ambition? You were
not made solely for the closet; 'The Dreams of Pindus, and the Aonian
Maids' cannot endure through the noon of manhood. You are too practical
for the mere poet, and too poetical to sink into the dull tenor of a
learned life. I have never seen you, yet I know you--I read your spirit
in your page; that aspiration for something better and greater than the
great and the good, which colours all your passionate revelations of
yourself and others--cannot be satisfied merely by ideal images. You
cannot be contented, as poets and historians mostly are, by becoming
great only from delineating great men, or imagining great events, or
describing a great era. Is it not worthier of you to be what you fancy
or relate? Awake, Maltravers, awake! Look into your heart, and feel
your proper destinies. And who am I that thus address you?--a woman