est and maturist intellects that the free commonwealth of good society brought within his reach—five years so spent had developed a boy, nursing noble dreams, into a man fit for noble action—retaining freshest youth in its enthusiasm, its elevation of sentiment, its daring, its energy, and divine credulity in its own unexhausted resources; but borrowing from maturity com- pactness and solidity of idea—the link between speculation and practice—the power to impress on others a sense of the superiority which has been self-elaborated by unconscious culture.
"So!" said Vance, after a prolonged pause, " I don't know whether I have resolve or genius; but, certainly, if I have made my way to some small reputation, patience, hope, and concentration of purpose must have the credit of it; and prudence, too, which you have forgotten to name, and certainly don't evince as a charioteer. I hope, my dear fellow, you are not extravagant. No debts, eh?—why do you laugh?"
"The question is so like you, Frank—thrifty as ever."
"Do you think I could have painted with a calm mind, if I knew that at my door there was a dun whom I could not pay? Art needs serenity; and if an artist begins his career with as few shirts to his back as I had, he must place economy among the rules of perspective."
Lionel laughed again, and made some comments on economy which were certainly, if smart, rather flippant, and tended not only to lower the favorable estimate of his intellectual improvement which Vance had just formed, but seriously disquieted the kindly artist. Vance knew the world—knew the peculiar temptations to which a young man in Lionel's position would be exposed—knew that contempt for economy belongs to that school of Peripatetics which reserves its last lessons for finished disciples in the sacred walks of the Queen's Bench.
However, that was no auspicious moment for didactic warnings.
"Here we are!" cried Lionel—" Putney Bridge."
They reached the little inn by the river-side, and while dinner was getting ready; they hired a boat. Vance took the oars.
Vance. "Not so pretty here as by those green quiet banks along which we glided, at moonlight, five years ago."
Lionel. "Ah, no. And that innocent, charming child, whose portrait you took—you have never heard of her since?"
Vance. "Never! How should 1? Have you .'"'
Lionel. *' Only what Darrell repeated to me. His lawyer had ascertained that she and her grandfather had gone to America. Darrell gently implied that, from what he learned of them,
