The voyage _is_ put off till the next vessel sails, and I have seen Vivian twice or thrice, and the result of the interviews has disappointed and depressed me. It seems to me that much of the previous effect I had produced is already obliterated. At the very sight of the great Babel--the evidence of the ease, the luxury, the wealth, the pomp, the strife, the penury, the famine, and the rags, which the focus of civilisation, in the disparities of old societies, inevitably gathers together--the fierce combative disposition seemed to awaken again; the perverted ambition, the hostility to the world; the wrath, the scorn; the war with man, and the rebellious murmur against Heaven. There was still the one redeeming point of repentance for his wrongs to his father--his heart was still softened there; and, attendant on that softness, I hailed a principle more like that of honour than I had yet recognised in Vivian. He cancelled the agreement which had assured him of a provision at the cost of his father's comforts. "At least, there," he said, "I will injure him no more!" But while, on this point, repentance seemed genuine, it was not so with regard to his conduct towards Miss Trevanion. His gipsy nurture, his loose associates, his extravagant French romances, his theatrical mode of looking upon love intrigues and stage plots, seemed all to rise between his intelligence and the due sense of the fraud and treachery he had practised. He seemed to feel more shame at the exposure than at the guilt; more despair at the failure of success than gratitude at escape from crime. In a word, the nature of a whole life was not to be remodelled at once--at least by an artificer so unskilled as I. After one of these interviews, I stole into the room where Austin sat with Roland, and, watching a seasonable moment when Roland, shaking off a reverie, opened his Bible, and sat down to it, with each muscle in his face set, as I had seen it before, into iron resolution, I beckoned my father from the room. PISISTRATUS.--I have again seen my cousin. I cannot make the way I wish. My dear father, you must see him. MR CAXTON.--I!--yes, assuredly, if I can be of any service. But will he listen to me? PISISTRATUS.--I think so. A young man will often respect in his elder, what he will resent as a presumption in his contemporary. MR CAXTON.--It maybe so: (_then, more thoughtfully,_) but you describe this strange boy's mind as a wreck!--in what part of the mouldering timbers can I fix the grappling-hook? Here, it seems that most of the supports on which we can best rely, when we would save another, fail us. Religion, honour, the associations of childhood, the bonds of home, filial obedience--even the intelligence of self-interest, in the philosophical sense of the word. And I, too!--a mere book-man! My dear son!--I despair!