"It were but an affectation to say that I can find nothing in them that is beautiful, nothing to please, nothing to admire. I have read many things in the writings of these men that were exquisitely beautiful. Many portions of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage are not surpassed for grandeur, beauty, and force, in the English language: and the Alastor of Shelly, is full of passages of exquisite tenderness and almost unequalled finish of versification. But I have never laid either of them down with feelings that I wished might remain. They excite the mind to a feverish and unhealthy action. We find little in them to deepen our sympathies with our fellows--little to make better the heart, or wiser the head." "You discriminate with clearness, Caroline," he said; "I did not know that you looked so narrowly into the merits of the world's favorites. But to change the subject; do you intend going to Mrs. Walsingham's next week?" "Yes, I think I will be there." "Are you fond of such assemblages?" the young man asked. "Not particularly so," Caroline replied. "But I think it right to mingle in society, although all of its forms are not pleasant to me." "And why do you mingle in it then, if its sphere is uncongenial?" "I cannot say, Mr. Clarence, that it is altogether uncongenial. Wherever we go, into society, we come in contact with much that is good. Beneath the false glitter, often assumed and worn without the heart's being in it, but from a weak spirit of conformity, lies much that is sound in principle, and healthy in moral life. In mingling, then, in society, we aid to develope and strengthen these good principles in others. We encourage, often, the weak and wavering, and bring back such as are beginning to wander from the simple dignity and truth of nature." "But is there not danger of our becoming dazzled by the false glitter?" "There may be. But we need not fear this, if we settle in our minds a right principle of action, and bind ourselves firmly to that principle." A pause followed this last remark, and then the subject of conversation was again changed to one of a more general nature.