It was done; the plan he had proposed to himself was so far executed: and when, after quitting Northferry, he sat down in a small solitary room of a little road-side inn, he began to laugh, and reconsider the whole with calmer, and less impassioned thoughts, than he had previously given to the subject. How different a thing looks when it is done, and when it is doing! As soon as Fate buys a picture from any man, she turns it with its face to the wall, and its back to the seller, writes INEVITABLE upon it, with a piece of black chalk; and the poor fool can never have the same view of it again. Chandos was a gardener--a hired servant--in that balanced state where thirty shillings a-week is thrown into the scale against slavery, just to prevent freedom from kicking the beam. A great many things had entered into the concoction of the notable scheme which he had pursued. There was the first vehement impulse of a noble but impetuous disposition; a good deal of pride, a little philosophy, and a touch of romance. He had determined to taste for a while the food of an inferior station, to know feelingly how the lowly earn their bread, and spend their lives; to see the things of humble condition not with a telescope from a height, but with the eye close to the object, and with a microscope, should need be. He had long been of opinion that it would be no misuse of time, were every young man even of much higher rank and pretensions than his own, to spend a year or more amongst the labouring classes of society, taking part in their toils, sharing their privations, learning in the school of experience their habits, wants, wishes, feelings. Our ancestors used to send their children out to a healthy cottage to nurse during their infancy, and, in many cases, (not all,) ensured thereby to their offspring robust and hardy constitutions, which could not have been gained in the luxurious dwellings of the great and high. Chandos had fancied often that such training might be as good for the mind as the body, had longed to try it, had thought it would do him good, especially when he found false views and cold conventionalities creep upon him, when he felt his judgment getting warped to the set forms of class, and his tastes becoming fastidious. Accident had fixed his resolution, and accident had given the direction in which it acted. But there were difficulties, inconveniences, regrets, which he had not thought of. We never embrace a new state without remembering with longing some of the advantages of the old one. He thought of being cut off from all refined society, with sensations not pleasurable; he thought of being discovered by old acquaintances with some sort of apprehension. But then he remembered that he was little likely to be brought into immediate contact with any of the great and high. He repeated to himself that no one had a right to question his conduct, or control his tastes. And in regard to refined occupations, to relieve the