“Indifference!” exclaimed Beauclerc--“what did I say Lady Cecilia, from which you could infer that I felt indifference? Indifferent to him whose name I cannot pronounce without emotion! I alone, of all the world, indifferent to that genius, pre-eminent and unrivalled, who has so long commanded the attention of the whole reading public, arrested at will the instant order of the day by tales of other times, and in this commonplace, this every-day existence of ours, created a holiday world, where, undisturbed by vulgar cares, we may revel in a fancy region of felicity, peopled with men of other times--shades of the historic dead, more illustrious and brighter than in life!” “Yes, the great Enchanter,” cried Cecilia. “Great and good Enchanter,” continued Beauclerc, “for in his magic there is no dealing with unlawful means. To work his ends, there is never aid from any one of the bad passions of our nature. In his writings there is no private scandal--no personal satire--no bribe to human frailty--no libel upon human nature. And among the lonely, the sad, and the suffering, how has he medicined to repose the disturbed mind, or elevated the dejected spirit!--perhaps fanned to a flame the unquenched spark, in souls not wholly lost to virtue. His morality is not in purple patches, ostentatiously obtrusive, but woven in through the very texture of the stuff. He paints man as he is, with all his faults, but with his redeeming virtues--the world as it goes, with all its compensating good and evil, yet making each man better contented with his lot. Without our well knowing how, the whole tone of our minds is raised--for, thinking nobly of our kind, he makes us think more nobly of ourselves!” Helen, who had sympathised with Beauclerc in every word he had said, felt how true it is that “----Next to genius, is the power Of feeling where true genius lies.” “Yet after all this, Granville,” said Lady Cecilia, “you would make us believe you never wished to have seen this great man?” Beauclerc made no answer. “Oh! how I wish I had seen him!” said Helen to Lady Davenant, the only person present who had had that happiness.