life which has been hurrying on from epoch to epoch, the abridgment tells
nothing. It is so with the life of each individual man: the life as it
stands before us is but a sterile epitome--hid from our sight the
EMOTIONS which are the People of the Heart. In such a year occurred a
visible something--a gain--a loss--a success--a disappointment; the
People of the Heart crowned or deposed a King. This is all we know; and
the most voluminous biography ever written must still be a meagre
abridgment of all that really individualised and formed a man. I ask not
your confidence in a single detail or fact in your existence which lies
beyond my sight. Far from me so curious an insolence; but I do ask you
this: Reflecting on your past life as a whole, have not your chief
sorrows had a common idiosyncrasy? Have they not been strangely directed
towards the frustration of some one single object--cherished by your
earliest hopes, and, as if in defiance of fate, resolutely clung to even
now?"

"It is true," muttered Darrell. "You do not offend me; go on!"

"And have not these SORROWS, in frustrating your object, often assumed,
too, a certain uniformity in the weapons they use, in the quarter they
harass or invade, almost as if it were a strategic policy that guided
them where they could most pain, or humble, or eject a FOE that they were
ordered to storm? Degrade you they could not; such was not their
mission. Heaven left you intact a kingliness of nature--a loftiness of
spirit, unabased by assaults levelled not against yourself, but your
pride; your personal dignity, though singularly sensitive, though
bitterly galled, stood proof. What might lower lesser men, lowered not
you; Heaven left you that dignity, for it belongs alike to your intellect
and your virtues--but suffered it to be a source of your anguish. Why?
Because, not content with adorning your virtues, it was covering the