"How loudly," said Clarence, "that last gust swept by; you remember that beautiful couplet in Tibullus,-- 'Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem, Et dominam tenero detinuisse sinu.'" ["Sweet on our couch to hear the winds above, And cling with closer heart to her we love."] "Ay," answered Mordaunt, with a scarcely audible sigh, "that is the feeling of the lover at the immites ventos, but we sages of the lamp make our mistress Wisdom, and when the winds rage without it is to her that we cling. See how, from the same object, different conclusions are drawn! The most common externals of nature, the wind and the wave, the stars and the heavens, the very earth on which we tread, never excite in different bosoms the same ideas; and it is from our own hearts, and not from an outward source, that we draw the hues which colour the web of our existence." "It is true," answered Clarence. "You remember that in two specks of the moon the enamoured maiden perceived two unfortunate lovers, while the ambitious curate conjectured that they were the spires of a cathedral? But it is not only to our feelings, but also to our reasonings, that we give the colours which they wear. The moral, for instance, which to one man seems atrocious, to another is divine. On the tendency of the same work what three people will agree? And how shall the most sanguine moralist hope to benefit mankind when he finds that, by the multitude, his wisest endeavours to instruct are often considered but as instruments to pervert?" "I believe," answered Mordaunt, "that it is from our ignorance that our contentions flow: we debate with strife and with wrath, with bickering and with hatred; but of the thing debated upon we remain in the profoundest darkness. Like the labourers of Babel, while we endeavour in vain to express our meaning to each other, the fabric by which, for a common end, we would have ascended to heaven from the ills of earth remains forever unadvanced and incomplete. Let us hope that knowledge is the universal language which shall reunite us. As, in their sublime allegory, the Ancients signified that only through virtue we arrive at honour, so let us believe that only through knowledge can we arrive at virtue!" "And yet," said Clarence, "that seems a melancholy truth for the mass of the people, who have no time for the researches of wisdom."