unspoken depths in the presence of its yet unknown mate, and then shudders at its own abandon, as it first tries on the wedding-garment of Paradise.
Lancelot was not yet past the era at which young geniuses are apt to 'talk book' a little.
'For what?' he answered, flashing up according to his fashion. 'To be;—to be great; to have done one mighty work before we die, and live, unloved or loved, upon the lips of men. For this all long who are not mere apes and wall-flies.'
'So longed the founders of Babel,' answered Argemone, carelessly, to this tirade. She had risen a strange fish, the cunning beauty, and now she was trying her fancy flies over him one by one.
'And were they so far wrong?' answered he. 'From that Babel society sprung our architecture, our astronomy, politics, and colonisation. No doubt the old Hebrew scheiks thought them impious enough, for daring to build brick walls instead of keeping to the good old-fashioned tents, and gathering themselves into a nation instead of remaining a mere family horde; and gave their own account of the myth, just as the antediluvian savages gave theirs of that strange Eden-scene, by the common interpretation of which the devil is made the first inventor of modesty. Men are all conservatives; every thing new is impious, till we get accustomed to it; and if it fails, the mob piously discover a divine vengeance in the mischance, from Babel to Catholic Emancipation.'
Lancelot had stuttered horribly during the latter
