these questions--excitement is contagious. And after all, if a man really
deem his mother-country in some danger, inaction is not philosophy, but a
species of parricide. But to think of the daily and hourly pain I should
occasion to you, my beloved and ardent Constanceby shocking all your
opinions, counteracting all your schemes, working against objects which
your father's fate and your early associations have so singularly made
duties in your eyes-to do all this is a patriotism beyond me. Let us
glide out of this whirlpool, and hoist sail for some nook in the country
where we can hear gentler sounds than the roar of the democracy."

Constance sighed, and suffered Godolphin to quit her in silence. But her
generous heart was touched by his own generosity. This is one of the
great curses of a woman who aspires to the man's part of political
controversy. If the man choose to act, the woman, with all her wiles, her
intrigues, her arts, is powerless. If Godolphin were to enter Parliament
a Tory, the great Whig rendezvous of Erpingham House was lost, and
Constance herself a cipher--and her father's wrongs forgotten, and the
stern purpose of her masculine career baffled at the very moment of
success. She now repented that she had ever desired to draw Godolphin's
attention to political matters. She wondered at her own want of
foresight. How, with his love for antiquity--his predilections for the
elegant and the serene--his philosophy of the "Rose-garden"--could she
ever have supposed that he would side with the bold objects and turbulent
will of a popular party in a stormy crisis?

The subject was not renewed. But she had the pain of observing that
Godolphin's manner was altered: he took pleasure in none of his old
hobbies--he was evidently dissatisfied with himself. In fact, it is true
that he, for the first time in his life, felt that there is a remorse to
the mind as well as to the soul, and that a man of genius cannot be