But stay! O yet awhile refrain! Forbear! And let me gaze again! Still at thy feet impassioned let me lie, Tranced by the magic of thy thrilling eye; Thy soft melodious voice still let me hear, Pouring its melting music on my ear; And, while my eager lip, with transport bold, Presumptuous seeks thy yielded hand to press, Still on thy charms enraptured let me gaze, Basking ecstatic in thy beauty's blaze, Such charms 'twere more than Heaven to possess: 'Tis Heaven only to behold. LIONEL GRANBY. CHAPTER X. He scanned with curious and prophetic eye Whate'er of lore tradition could supply From Gothic tale, or song or fable old-- Roused him still keen to listen and to pry. _The Minstrel_. You judge the English character with too much favor Lionel, said Col. R----. The Englishman is not free! Though vain, arrogant, and imperious, there is not a more abject slave on earth. His boasting spirit, his full-mouthed independence and his lordly step quail to rank, {353} and he is ever crawling amid the purlieus or over the threshold of that fantastic temple of fashion called "Society." It is an endless contest between those who are initiated into its mysteries and those who crowd its avenues. Wealth batters down the door--assumes a proud niche in the chilling fane, and uniting itself to that silent yet powerful aristocracy which wields the oracles of the god, its breath can create you an _exclusive_, or its frown can degrade you to the vulgar herd. Rank, which is the idol of an Englishman's sleepless devotion, wealth because it is curiously akin to the former, and some indistinct conception of the difference between a people and the mob, render him, in his own conceit, a gentleman and a politician. His first thought if cast on a desert island would be his rank, and if he had companions in misfortune, he would ere night arrange the dignity and etiquette of intercourse. Literature seeks the same degrading arena, and alas! how few are there who do not deck the golden calf with the laurels won in the conflicts of genius, and who, stimulated solely by lucre, shed their momentary light athwart the horizon, even as the meteor whose radiance is exhaled from the corruption of a fœtid marsh. But there is a class who, ennobled by letters, are always independent; and though they be of the race of authors whom Sir Horace Walpole calls "a troublesome, conceited set of fellows," you will find them too proud and too honest to palter away the prerogatives of their station. But we are now at the door of Elia; come, let me introduce you to one of his simple and unaffected suppers!