A NEW AMBITION. 283 



in the town of Cromarty, he could enjoy as much hap- 

 piness as it was possible for him to enjoy on earth. A 

 wife, he thought, he could dispense with ; no passion 

 except the passions of the mind had ever seriously 

 moved him ; and though he took special delight in con- 

 versation with clever women, he could have that con- 

 versation without marriage. He would ply the mallet 

 in the summer days ; he would owe no man a sixpence ; 

 he would read his favourite books in the evenings of 

 June and the short days of December ; he would train 

 himself to ever-increasing vigour and grace of style, and 

 would write with the fresh enthusiasm of one for whom 

 literature was its own reward. Thus was he contented 

 to live and to die ; the world, it was his inflexible con- 

 viction, had nothing better than this to offer him. 

 If the question were simply of more or less happiness, it 

 would be difficult to prove that in all this he was wrong. 

 The quality, however, of the happiness would not have 

 been the highest, and he might have awakened from his 

 idyll of intellectual luxury to the consciousness that, in 

 evading the pains of action, he had missed the sternest 

 but the noblest joys of life. When Miss Fraser taught 

 him to understand the love-poetry of Burns, as he ex- 

 pressly says she did, he bade adieu for ever, though not 

 without a sigh, to the tranquil hopes which had hitherto 

 inspired him. He told Miss Eraser that she had spoiled 

 a good philosopher, and it was with no exultation, 

 though with calm and fixed resolution, that he felt the 

 spirit of the philosophic recluse die within him and the 

 spirit of the man arise. The classic fable was reversed. 

 Daphne overtook and disenchanted her lover. Miller 

 awoke from the dream which was stealing over him ; the 

 roots which had already struck deep into his native soil, 

 and which promised to bind him down to a mild tree- 



