"And I am more especially concerned to think, that in all probability your professional practice has been injured by your absence from England, as your stay has not been long enough to justify any public remuneration. Over the public purse I have not an unlimited command; over my own I have, and if you will suffer me to defray the expenses into which I have led you by sending you out of the country you will make me your debtor." Markham was perplexed. He was absolutely and decidedly against accepting the offer, but he was not ready with the proper language in which to decline it. After the hesitation of a few seconds, he replied, "Your lordship will pardon me, if I know not how to reply to your very kind offer; and your lordship will be pleased to hear that under present circumstances it is superfluous. I had but little professional practice to lose, and that I trust is not altogether lost; besides, if I begin again it will be under better auspices, with a little more experience and a little more knowledge." The nobleman was not offended at the young man's proper feeling of independence. Markham's confusion and hesitation arose from not considering the immense difference in station between himself and his patron; his patron was aware of the feeling, and instead of resenting it, regarded it with complacency as a good symptom of a sound and an honest ambition. There are indeed arts by which a man may rise to almost any eminence in political station, but many of them are low creeping arts. It has been pointedly said, that the highest stations in society are like the summits of the Pyramids, accessible only to eagles and reptiles. Markham's aspiring was more of the eagle than the reptile cast. The nobleman with whom he was conversing was aware of this, and glad for the sake of human nature to see it. He had had much intercourse with aspirants, but he had found them for the most part of the creeping sycophantic character, stooping to any body and to any thing which might seem to favor their schemes. It was not so with Markham. The spirit of high station was in his mind long before he reached it; and that kept him in the true feeling of independence and self-esteem. Independence quite free from affectation and conceit, is too uncommon to pass unnoticed. To be at once independent of the great and also independent of the noisy multitude is an acquirement of great value, only to be attained by self converse and reflection. True independence is in and from the mind.