the all in all."

They spent the summer mornings in excursions round the beautiful
neigbbourhood, dined early, and sailed on the calm lake at moonlight.
Their talk was such as might be expected from lovers of books in summer
holidays. Savarin was a critic by profession; Graham Vane, if not that,
at least owed such literary reputation as he had yet gained to essays in
which the rare critical faculty was conspicuously developed.

It was pleasant to hear the clash of these two minds encountering each
other; they differed perhaps less in opinions than in the mode by which
opinions are discussed. The Englishman's range of reading was wider than
the Frenchman's, and his scholarship more accurate; but the Frenchman had
a compact neatness of expression, a light and nimble grace, whether in
the advancing or the retreat of his argument, which covered deficiencies,
and often made them appear like merits. Graham was compelled, indeed, to
relinquish many of the forces of superior knowledge or graver eloquence,
which with less lively antagonists he could have brought into the field,
for the witty sarcasm of Savarin would have turned them aside as pedantry
or declamation. But though Graham was neither dry nor diffuse, and the
happiness at his heart brought out the gayety of humour which had been
his early characteristic, and yet rendered his familiar intercourse
genial and playful, still there was this distinction between his humour
and Savarin's wit,--that in the first there was always something earnest,
in the last always something mocking. And in criticism Graham seemed
ever anxious to bring out a latent beauty, even in writers comparatively
neglected; Savarin was acutest when dragging forth a blemish never before
discovered in writers universally read.

Graham did not perhaps notice the profound attention with which Isaura