intellect and feeling--so too, amidst the severer and statelier texture
of the once ambitious, laborious mind, which had conducted Darrell to
renown--amidst all that gathered-up intensity of passion, which admitted
no comedy into Sorrow, and saw in Love but the aspect of Fate--amidst all
this lofty seriousness of soul, there was yet a vivid capacity of
enjoyment--those fine sensibilities to the pleasurable sun-rays of life,
which are constitutional to all GENIUS, no matter how grave its
vocations. True, affliction at last may dull them, as it dulls all else
that we took from Nature when she equipped us for life. Yet, in the mind
of Darrell, affliction had shattered the things most gravely coveted,
even more than it had marred its perceptive acknowledgment of the
sympathies between fancies that move to smiles, and thoughts that
bequeath solemn lessons, or melt to no idle tears. Had Darrell been
placed amidst the circumstances that make happy the homes of earnest men,
Darrell would have been mirthful; had Waife been placed amongst the
circumstances that concentrate talent, and hedge round life with trained
thicksets and belting laurels, Waife would have been grave.

It was not in the earlier conferences that took place in Waife's
apartment that the subject which had led the old man to Fawley was
brought into discussion. When Waife had sought to introduce it--when,
after Sophy's arrival, he had looked wistfully into Darrell's face,
striving to read there the impression she had created, and, unable to
discover, had begun, with tremulous accents, to reopen the cause that
weighed on him--Darrell stopped him at once. "Hush--not yet; remember
that it was in the very moment you first broached this sorrowful topic,
on arriving here, and perceived how different the point of view from
which we two must regard it, that your nerves gave way--your illness
rushed on you. Wait, not only till you are stronger, but till we know
each other better. This subject is one that it becomes us to treat with