"Alas!" said I, "who can bear too close a search beneath the mask and robe? Talk not of me now. It is ungracious for the fortunate to repine; and I reserve whatever may disquiet me within for your future consolation and advice. At present speak to me of yourself: you are happy, then?" "I am!" said Bolingbroke, emphatically. "Life seems to me to possess two treasures: one glittering and precarious; the other of less rich a show, but of a more solid value. The one is Power, the other Virtue; and there is this main difference between the two,--Power is intrusted to us as a loan ever required again, and with a terrible arrear of interest; Virtue obtained by us as a /boon/ which we can only lose through our own folly, when once it is acquired. In my youth I was caught by the former; hence my errors and my misfortunes! In my declining years I have sought the latter; hence my palliatives and my consolation. But you have not seen my home, and /all/ its attractions," added Bolingbroke, with a smile which reminded me of his former self. "I will show them to you." And we turned our steps to the house. As we walked thither I wondered to find how little melancholy was the change Bolingbroke had undergone. Ten years, which bring man from his prime to his decay, had indeed left their trace upon his stately form, and the still unrivalled beauty of his noble features; but the manner gained all that the form had lost. In his days of more noisy greatness, there had been something artificial and unquiet in the sparkling alternations he had loved to adopt. He had been too fond of changing wisdom by a quick turn into wit,--too fond of the affectation of bordering the serious with the gay, business with pleasure. If this had not taken from the polish of his manner, it had diminished its dignity and given it the air of being assumed and insincere. Now all was quiet, earnest, and impressive; there was tenderness even in what was melancholy: and if there yet lingered the affectation of blending the classic character with his own, the character was more noble and the affectation more unseen. But this manner was only the faint mirror of a mind which, retaining much of its former mould, had been embellished and exalted by adversity, and which if it banished not its former faculties, had acquired a thousand new virtues to redeem them. "You see," said my companion, pointing to the walls of the hall, which we had now entered, "the subject which at present occupies the greater part of my attention. I am meditating how to make the hall most illustrative of its owner's pursuits. You see the desire of improving, of creating, and of associating the improvement and the creation with ourselves, follows us banished men even to our seclusion. I think of having those walls painted with the implements of husbandry, and through pictures of spades and ploughshares to express my employments and testify my content in them."