youth out of the frivolous present into the serious future, and seeking
companionship, not with contemporary idlers, but with the highest and
maturest intellects that the free commonwealth of good society brought
within his reach: five years so spent had developed a boy, nursing noble
dreams, into a man fit for noble action,--retaining freshest youth in its
enthusiasm, its elevation of sentiment, its daring, its energy, and
divine credulity in its own unexhausted resources; but borrowing from
maturity compactness and solidity of idea,--the link between speculation
and practice, the power to impress on others a sense of the superiority
which has been self-elaborated by unconscious culture.

"So!" said Vance, after a prolonged pause, "I don't know whether I have
resolve or genius; but certainly if I have made my way to some small
reputation, patience, hope, and concentration of purpose must have the
credit of it; and prudence, too, which you have forgotten to name, and
certainly don't evince as a charioteer. I hope, my dear fellow, you are
not extravagant? No doubt, eh?--why do you laugh?"

"The question is so like you, Frank,--thrifty as ever."

"Do you think I could have painted with a calm mind if I knew that at my
door there was a dun whom I could not pay? Art needs serenity; and if an
artist begin his career with as few shirts to his back as I had, he must
place economy amongst the rules of perspective."

Lionel laughed again, and made some comments on economy which were
certainly, if smart, rather flippant, and tended not only to lower the
favourable estimate of his intellectuai improvement which Vance had just
formed, but seriously disquieted the kindly artist. Vance knew the
world,--knew the peculiar temptations to which a young man in Lionel's