try a yet untried experiment? Why should I not live like others in their
graver as in their lighter pursuits? I confess, when I look back to the
years I have spent in England, I feel that I calculated erroneously. I
chalked out a plan--I have followed it rigidly. I have lived for self,
for pleasure, for luxury; I have summoned wit, beauty, even wisdom around
me. I have been the creator of a magic circle, but to the magician
himself the magic was tame and ignoble. In short, I have dreamed, and am
awake. Yet, what course of life should supply this, which I think of
deserting? Shall I go once more abroad, and penetrate some untravelled
corner of the earth? Shall I retire into the country, and write, draining
my mind of the excitement that presses on it; or lastly, shall I plunge
with my contemporaries into the great gulf of actual events, and strive,
and fret, and struggle?--or--in short, Radclyffe, you are a wise man:
advise me!"

"Alas!" answered Radclyffe, "it is of no use advising one to be happy who
has no object beyond himself. Either enthusiasm, or utter mechanical
coldness, is necessary to reconcile men to the cares and mortifications of
life. You must feel nothing, or you must feel for others. Unite yourself
to a great object; see its goal distinctly; cling to its course
courageously; hope for its triumph sanguinely; and on its majestic
progress you sail, as in a ship, agitated indeed by the storms, but
unheeding the breeze and the surge that would appal the individual effort.
The larger public objects make us glide smoothly and unfelt over our minor
private griefs. To be happy, my dear Godolphin, you must forget yourself.
Your refining and poetical temperament preys upon your content. Learn
benevolence--it is the only cure to a morbid nature."

Godolphin was greatly struck by this answer of Radclyffe; the more so, as
he had a deep faith in the unaffected sincerity and the calculating wisdom