reflection would ripen into influences over action?--aught that might suggest the cases in which, not ignobly, Pity might subjugate Scorn? In the royal abode of that Soul, does Pride only fortify Honour?--is it but the mild king, not the imperial despot? Would it blind, as its rival, the Reason? Would it chain, as a rebel, the Heart? Would it man the dominions, that might be serene, by the treasures it wastes-by the wars it provokes? Self-knowledge! self-knowledge! From Heaven, indeed, descends the precept, "KNOW THYSELF." That truth was told to us by the old heathen oracle. But what old heathen oracle has told us how to know?
CHAPTER IV.
THE MAN-EATER HUMILIATED. HE ENCOUNTERS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN A TRAVELLER, WHO, LIKE SHAKESPEARE'S JAQUES, IS "A MELANCHOLY FELLOW"; WHO ALSO, LIKE JAQUES, HATH "GREAT REASON TO BE BAD"; AND WHO, STILL LIKE JAQUES, IS "FULL OF MATTER."
Jasper Losely rode slowly on through the clear frosty night; not back to the country town which he had left on his hateful errand, nor into the broad road to London. With a strange desire to avoid the haunts of men, he selected--at each choice of way in the many paths branching right and left, between waste and woodland--the lane that seemed the narrowest and the dimmest. It was not remorse that gnawed him, neither was it mere mercenary disappointment, nor even the pang of baffled vengeance--it was the profound humiliation of diseased self-love--the conviction that, with all his brute power, he had been powerless in the very time and scene in which he had pictured to himself so complete a triumph. Even the quiet with which he had escaped was a mortifying recollection. Capture itself would have been preferable, if capture had been preceded by brawl and strife--the exhibition of his hardihood and prowess. Gloomily bending over his horse's neck, he cursed himself as fool and coward. What would he have had!--a new crime on his soul? Perhaps he would have answered, "Anything rather than this humiliating failure." He did not rack his brains with conjecturing if Cutts had betrayed him, or by what other mode assistance had been sent in such time of need to Darrell.
