Thus, when he begins to paint human characters, essentially different from his own, his knowledge comes to him almost intuitively. It is as if he were describing the mansions in which he himself has formerly lodged, though for a short time. Hence in great writers of History--of Romance--of the Drama--the _gusto_ with which they paint their personages; their creations are flesh and blood, not shadows or machines. Maltravers was at first, then, an egotist, in the matter of his rude and desultory sketches--in the manner, as I said before, he was careless and negligent, as men will be who have not yet found that expression is an art. Still those wild and valueless essays--those rapt and secret confessions of his own heart--were a delight to him. He began to taste the transport, the intoxication of an author. And, oh, what a luxury is there in that first love of the Muse! that process by which we give palpable form to the long-intangible visions which have flitted across us;--the beautiful ghost of the Ideal within us, which we invoke in the Gadara of our still closets, with the wand of the simple pen! It was early noon, the day after he had formed his acquaintance with the De Montaignes, that Maltravers sat in his favourite room;--the one he had selected for his study from the many chambers of his large and solitary habitation. He sat in a recess by the open window, which looked on the lake; and books were scattered on his table, and Maltravers was jotting down his criticisms on what he read, mingled with his impressions on what he saw. It is the pleasantest kind of composition--the note-book of a man who studies in retirement, who observes in society, who in all things can admire and feel. He was yet engaged in this easy task, when Cesarini was announced, and the young brother of the fair Teresa entered his apartment. “I have availed myself soon of your invitation,” said the Italian. “I acknowledge the compliment,” replied Maltravers, pressing the hand shyly held out to him. “I see you have been writing--I thought you were attached to literature. I read it in your countenance, I heard it in your voice,” said Cesarini, seating himself. “I have been idly beguiling a very idle leisure, it is true,” said Maltravers. “But you do not write for yourself alone--you have an eye to the great tribunals--Time and the Public.” “Not so, I assure you honestly,” said Maltravers, smiling. “If you look at the books on my table, you will see that they are the great masterpieces of ancient and modern lore--these are studies that discourage tyros--” “But inspire them.” “I do not think so. Models may form our taste as critics, but do not excite us to be authors. I fancy that our own emotions, our own sense of our destiny, make the great lever of the inert matter we accumulate. ‘Look in thy heart and write,’ said an old English writer,* who did not, however, practise what he preached. And you, Signor--” * Sir Philip Sidney.