So that there occurred an interregnum of information, at least, if not of interest, in respect to the Harleys. Maurice was in London, struggling forward to find what place he could in that perennial battle--struggling not very successfully--for, to the amazement of all, and, above all, to his own, he was not so greatly in advance of other people, when he had done something definite to be judged by, as the Fellow of Exeter had supposed himself. Providence, in quaint, poetic justice, had deprived Maurice, for example, of that faculty of writing which he had, maybe, esteemed too highly. His admirers had prophesied great triumphs for him in the field of literature before he had tried his pen there; but it turned out that Maurice could not write, and the discovery was rather humiliating to the young man. I have no doubt he made an infinitude of other discoveries equally unpleasant. His Fellowship kept him from starving, but it aggravated his failures and the pain of them, and held up more conspicuously than might have been desired, the unexpected imperfections of “Harley of Exeter,” in whom his contemporaries had been disposed to put a great deal of faith. Nevertheless, Maurice held on bravely. I liked him better and better as he found himself out. And he bore the discovery like a man. As for Johnnie, poor boy, who had, all uneducated and without training as he was, just that gift of putting his mind into words which his brother lacked--he had not yet come to the bitter ending of his boyish dream. He was busy with his second book, in high hope and spirits, thinking himself equally secure of fame and of love. The poor lad had forgotten entirely the difference between the present time and that past age in which literature, fresh and novel, took its most sovereign place. He thought how Fanny Burney was fêted and applauded for her early novel; he thought of Scott’s unrivalled influence and honor; and he forgot that a hundred people write books, and especially write stories, now-a-days, for one who wrote then--and that he himself was only the unconsidered member of a multitudinous tribe, over whose heads Fame soared far away. It was not wonderful--he was scarcely one and twenty yet, though he was an author, and Miss Reredos’s slave. He meant to make the lady of his love “glorious with his pen,” as Montrose did, and expected to find an equal monarchy in her heart. Poor cripple Johnnie! a sadder or more grievous folly never was.