the time I had passed four weary years thus, I really found, to my severe distress, that my mind grew dull, and, in spite of me, was filled by trifles. Where no interest is taken in science, literature, and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds, strangers alike to activity and meditation, become so limited as to render all intercourse with them at once tasteless and oppressive. There was no enjoyment near me save in a certain methodical regularity, whose desire was that of reducing all things to its own level; a constant grief to characters called by heaven to destinies of their own. The ill-will I innocently excited, joined with my sense of the void all around me, seemed to check even my breath. Envy is only to be borne where it is excited by admiration; but oh the misery of living where jealousy itself awakens no enthusiasm! where we are hated as if powerful, though in fact allowed less influence than the obscurest of our rivals. It is impossible simply to despise the opinions of the herd: they sink, in spite of us, into the heart, and lie waiting the moments when our own superiority has involved us in distress; then, then, even an apparently temperate '_Well?_' may prove the most insupportable word we can hear. In vain we tell ourselves, 'such a man is unworthy to judge me, such a woman is incapable of comprehending me:' the human face has great power over the human heart; and when we read there a secret disapprobation, it haunts us in defiance of our reason. The circle which surrounds you always hides the rest of the world: the smallest object close before your eyes intercepts their view of the sun. So is it with the set among whom we dwell: nor Europe nor posterity can render us insensible to the intrigues of our next door neighbor; and whoever would live happily in the cultivation of genius ought to be, above all things, cautious in the choice of his immediate mental atmosphere." [1] If this was Corinne's first English dinner, how did she know the _usual_ time for retiring?--TR. [2] What a flattering picture of female society, at the country-house of an intelligent English peer, not fifty years since!--TR. [3] Spelt _wisk_ in the original.--TR. CHAPTER II.