SECTION XXVI. "Nay, do not think I flatter; For what advancement can I hope from thee, HAMLET. THE dinner, the scene, and, above all, the conversation at Littlecote, made the few hours I passed there, perhaps the very pleasantest in all my tour; and I could not help, as we returned home, thanking Lovegrove heartily for what he had procured me. "Our landlord's views of life," said he, " have gone far to confirm my own. For when I have sometimes reproached myself for my want of courage to encounter an active career, and beheld the career of others, who, after much trouble, and painful vicissitudes, have returned to die at home, I have thought it might perhaps be better for the world in general, if they were always sure of ending, like Freeman, "exactly where they began." I am afraid, however, I was impolitic in taking you to Littlecote, before you had passed the day with me, which you promised. But recollect, my home is but a bachelor's, and a cottage, and you will have nothing but cottage fare, such as Horace offered to his friend Torquatus: "Modica olus omne patella.'" To this I answered, in the words of the same Ho race "Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.' "And yet Horace was as fond of good eating as any Apicius of London or Paris. But my good friend, you must be not a little changed since our friande Christ Church suppers, if by your 'olus omne' you mean a dish of herbs; which, to tell you the truth, from your rotundity, as well as placidity of countenance, I do not guess to have been your usual entertainment since we parted." Then taking out my tablets, I said, "I shall certainly set you down among the happy, in the journal I told you I was keeping; and how you are so, living, as you say, in a cottage, though, to my knowledge, without a spark of romance about you (for I believe you have not even been in love,) I shall feel edified in knowing." 66 My life and adventures," returned he, "are the most common-place that ever were put together; not a single piece of good or bad fortune to show for all the years I have lived. Yet I do not deny that you are right in your conjecture; and with you I believe my rotundity arises very much from my placidity; both which you are pleased to notice. In a word, I have been always, or generally, as happy as when you used to say, at college, nothing could put me out." "And this," said I," is better than an estate of eight thousand a year;' as an acquaintance I have made here sufficiently demonstrates. Yet without meaning to be impertinent, I believe, from what I have heard of you in the world, you have not even aspired to increase your paternal fortune; and with your abilities I should like to know why." cr "You have been rightly informed,” he replied, as will, I fear, be proved to you by my dinner to morrow. He then gave me some particulars of his very unmarked, but happy life, since we parted as young men by which it was quite clear that he had no reason to repent preferring the cool sequestered vale he had chosen, to mounting the steep and craggy heights, where so many adventurous people have been dashed to pieces. At college he was universally popular; yet, though feelingly alive to the politer parts of learning, distinguished chiefly for a quiet cheerfulness, which in the little rubs and mortifications which will sometimes ruffle even an undergraduate, never abandoned him. His habits were, for a young man, rather retired, but more for the peace it gave him, than from aversion to company-once among whom, he was as lively as the liveliest. He had pleasantry, but always so free from malignity, and managed with so much tact, that the object of it was among the first to be pleased. He therefore shone in society, but would quit the merriest, free from excitement, and plunge into solitary study, with equal if not higher satisfaction. This was his picture at college; and I should think from his account it had belonged to him ever since. The defect in his character (if it was a defect) was the want of energy, which prevented him from embracing any arduous profession. And yet, as he said himself, it was wonderful that he had not become a man of ambition, or at least of business. He showed me, in a visit I afterwards made him, whole volumes of political and historical collections, formed by himself, with as much industry as if he had been designed for a cabinet minister. In his travels abroad, his views were quite as statistical as classical, and his dreams of the future as indicative of activity, as of the calm which was afterwards his choice. But it is the character of youth to possess in idea everything which it only imagines; perhaps a more delightful possession than many realities. Thus, in some letters he allowed me to see, written from Bagnières de Bigorre, when only twenty years of age, he describes his dreams of the world, but always in the midst of the wildest and most sequestered scenery. "Every evening," said he, " at a given hour, I traverse the beautiful walk, that overhangs the river, called after a Duchess of Bourbon, who planted it; and here I think of many a scene that is past, and many a project to come; power and place among them. In these dreams I wander till darkness surprises me, and 'sheds a browner horror o'er the woods.' 999 This half-political, half-poetical spirit was afterwards transplanted by family interest to the elbow of one of the Ministers, with whom he officiated as secretary for a twelvemonth; but at the end of that time he quitted his patron, and the whole walk of active ambition. When I expressed surprise at this, especially as his chief, he said, was quite satisfied with him, "Yes!" he observed, "satisfied as I am with my servant, who is an excellent machine. I was civilly treated; I was punctual in attendance, did as I was bid, and gave no offence: nay, once or twice was asked to an official dinner, where I was expected to eat, listen, and say nothing. But, except officially, I had not the honour of the great |