“Ah, no!” said the high-souled Madeline, eagerly; “do not take away from us the best feeling and the highest desire we can cherish. How poor, even in this beautiful world, with the warm sun and fresh air about us, that alone are sufficient to make us glad, would be life, if we could not make the happiness of others!” Aram looked at the beautiful speaker with a soft and half-mournful smile. There is one very peculiar pleasure that we feel as we grow older,--it is to see embodied in another and a more lovely shape the thoughts and sentiments we once nursed ourselves; it is as if we viewed before us the incarnation of our own youth; and it is no wonder that we are warmed towards the object, that thus seems the living apparition of all that was brightest in ourselves! It was with this sentiment that Aram now gazed on Madeline. She felt the gaze, and her heart beat delightedly, but she sunk at once into a silence, which she did not break during the rest of their walk. “I do not say,” said Aram, after a pause, “that we are not able to make the happiness of those immediately around us. I speak only of what we can effect for the mass. And it is a deadening thought to mental ambition, that the circle of happiness we can create is formed more by our moral than our mental qualities. A warm heart, though accompanied but by a mediocre understanding, is even more likely to promote the happiness of those around, than are the absorbed and abstract, though kindly powers of a more elevated genius; but (observing Lester about to interrupt him), let us turn from this topic,--let us turn from man’s weakness to the glories of the mother-nature, from which he sprung.” And kindling, as he ever did, the moment he approached a subject so dear to his studies, Aram now spoke of the stars, which began to sparkle forth,--of the vast, illimitable career which recent science had opened to the imagination,--and of the old, bewildering, yet eloquent theories, which from age to age had at once misled and elevated the conjecture of past sages. All this was a theme which his listeners loved to listen to, and Madeline not the least. Youth, beauty, pomp, what are these, in point of attraction, to a woman’s heart, when compared to eloquence?--the magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells! CHAPTER VIII. THE PRIVILEGE OF GENIUS.--LESTER’S SATISFACTION AT THE ASPECT OF EVENTS.--HIS CONVERSATION WITH WALTER.--A DISCOVERY. “Alc.--I am for Lidian: This accident no doubt will draw him from his hermit’s life! “Lis.--Spare my grief, and apprehend What I should speak.” --Beaumont and Fletcher.--The Lovers’ Progress.