and strongest passion of his life. It might be seen in the paleness of
his brow, and that nameless expression of suffering which betrays itself
in the lines about the mouth, that his health was affected by the
conflict within him; and many a sudden fit of absence and abstraction,
many an impatient sigh, followed by a forced and unnatural gayety, told
the observant Valerie that he was the prey of a sorrow he was too proud
to disclose. He compelled himself, however, to take, or to affect, an
interest in the singular phenomena of the social state around
him,--phenomena that, in a happier or serener mood, would indeed have
suggested no ordinary food for conjecture and meditation.

The state of _visible transition_ is the state of nearly all the
enlightened communities in Europe. But nowhere is it so pronounced as in
that country which may be called the Heart of European Civilization.
There, all to which the spirit of society attaches itself appears broken,
vague, and half developed,--the Antique in ruins, and the New not formed.
It is, perhaps, the only country in which the Constructive principle has
not kept pace with the Destructive. The Has Been is blotted out; the To
Be is as the shadow of a far land in a mighty and perturbed sea.*

* The reader will remember that these remarks were written long
before the last French Revolution, and when the dynasty of Louis
Philippe was generally considered most secure.

Maltravers, who for several years had not examined the progress of modern
literature, looked with mingled feelings of surprise, distaste, and
occasional and most reluctant admiration, on the various works which the
successors of Voltaire and Rousseau have produced, and are pleased to
call the offspring of Truth united to Romance.