"I am not satisfied with this selfish hoarding. A voice is ever urging me on,--'Create! create!' it cries; and while my pencil moves, I am a creator; exulting in the pictures graven upon my soul, as no parent ever joyed over a beloved child. 'They are mine--mine!' I repeat in an ecstacy. I have wept above--almost worshipped them! Then comes the chill, grey light of critical reason, as when you awake at morning, and see things as they _are_: the soul-pictures are beauteous still:--my copy the veriest daub!" "The keenness of your disappointment is an augury of success. The lithography is perfect--you must not despond at the failure of one proof-impression. Your mortification is a greater triumph than the complacency with which a mediocre genius surveys his work." "You remember Sheridan's maiden speech," said Charley. "I have read of Demosthenes'," replied Lynn. "Sheridan's was a similar case. He was hooted at for his presumption; his first and second attempts were wretched: and his friends advised him to retire from the rostrum forever. 'Never!' said he, striking his breast. 'It is _here_, and shall come out!'" "A glorious 'coming out' it was!" responded Ida. "What do you say now?"--to Lynn. "That it is _here_!" returning her bright look. "Was ever man more blessed in his friends? More fortunate than Adam, I take my guardian angels with me, from the Paradise I leave to-morrow." "You must array one in a less questionable shape, if you would have men admit his angelic relationship," said Charley, with a grimace. "What are you looking at?" Lynn did not reply. They were upon a hill; and some object in the valley beneath fastened his gaze. The pensive cast of his features bordered upon gloom, as they neared it. Ida saw only a graceful knoll, bounded, except towards the west, by a chain of more imposing eminences. A monarch oak stood in isolated sovereignty upon its summit; it had shaded a dwelling, for one chimney yet remained; and the sickly herbage of the slope was not the produce of a virgin soil. Lynn stopped. Not a word was spoken, his eyes were too full of tender sadness; the man--not the artist, looked from them. "A lonely tree, and a desolate hearth-stone!" muttered he. "It is prophetic!" "Is the spot known to you?" asked Ida, gently, as they rode on. "It was my birth-place." "I had forgotten;" said Charley. "You were very young when you left it." "But I remember it. I could point out to you the very place where my mother taught me to walk;--a grass-plat before the door:--she upon the step, my father kneeling at a short distance, and each tempting me to undertake the journey from one to the other. They are gone! parents, brother, sisters! there is but one puny scion of a noble line remaining!"