VIVIAN.--_Distinction!_ You do not see the difference between us. You have but a fortune to make, I have a name to redeem; you look calmly on the future, I have a dark blot to erase from the past. PISISTRATUS, (_soothingly_.)--It is erased. Five years of no weak bewailings, but of manly reform, steadfast industry, conduct so blameless, that even Guy (whom I look upon as the incarnation of blunt English honesty) half doubts whether you are '_cute_ enough for "a station"--a character already so high, that I long for the hour when you will again take your father's spotless name, and give me the pride to own our kinship to the world; all this surely redeems the errors arising from an uneducated childhood and a wandering youth. VIVIAN, (_leaning over his horse, and putting his hand on my shoulder_.)--"My dear friend, what do I owe you?" Then recovering his emotion, and pushing on at a quicker pace, while he continues to speak, "But can you not see that, just in proportion as my comprehension of right would become clear and strong, so my conscience would become also more sensitive and reproachful; and the better I understand my gallant father, the more I must desire to be as he would have had his son. Do you think it would content him, could he see me branding cattle and bargaining with bullock-drivers? Was it not the strongest wish of his heart that I should adopt his own career? Have I not heard you say that he would have had you too a soldier, but for your mother? I have no mother! If I made thousands, and tens of thousands, by this ignoble calling, would they give my father half the pleasure that he would feel at seeing my name honourably mentioned in a despatch? No, no! you have banished the gipsy blood, and now the soldier's breaks out! Oh for one glorious day in which I may clear my way into fair repute, as our fathers before us!--when tears of proud joy may flow from those eyes that have wept such hot drops at my shame! When _she_, too, in her high station, beside that sleek lord, may say, 'His heart was not so vile, after all!' Don't argue with me--it is in vain! Pray, rather, that I may have leave to work out my own way; for I tell you that, if condemned to stay here, I may not murmur aloud--I may go through this round of low duties as the brute turns the wheel of a mill: but my heart will prey on itself, and you shall soon write on my gravestone the epitaph of the poor poet you told us of, whose true disease was the thirst of glory--'Here lies one whose name was written in water.'"