of mind suited to the hot contests and nightly warfare of parliamentary
politics, that it is not probable he would ever have won a continuous and
solid distinction in a career which requires either obtuseness of mind or
enthusiasm of purpose to encounter the repeated mortifications and
failures which the most brilliant debutant ordinarily endures. As it was,
however, it produced a grave and solemn train of thought in Godolphin's
breast. He mused much over his past life, and the musing did not satisfy
him. He felt like one of those recorded in physiological history who have
been in a trance for years: and now slowly awakening, he acknowledged the
stir and rush of revived but confused emotions. Nature, perhaps, had
intended Godolphin for a poet; for, with the exception of the love of
glory, the poetical characteristics were rife within him; and over his
whole past existence the dimness of unexpressed poetical sensation had
clung and hovered. It was this which had deadened his soul to the active
world, and wrapped him in the land of dreams; it was this which had
induced that vague and restless dissatisfaction with the Actual which had
brought the thirst for the Ideal; it was this which had made him
fastidious in love, repining in pleasure, magnificent in luxury, seeking
and despising all things in the same breath. There are many, perhaps, of
this sort, who, having the poet's nature, have never found the poet's vent
to his emotions; have wandered over the visionary world without chancing
to discover the magic wand that was stored within the dark chamber of
their mind, and would have reduced the visions into shape and substance.
Alas! what existence can be more unfulfilled than that of one who has the
soul of the poet and not the skill? who has the susceptibility and the
craving, not the consolation or the reward?

But if this cloud of dreamlike emotion had so long hung over Godolphin, it
began now to melt away from his heart; a clearer and distincter view of
the large objects of life lay before him; and he felt that he was