When Israel required to be trained as a peculiar race, the desert was chosen as their abode, and some of the most lofty minds are those which are longest schooled in solitude. But it has also its disadvantages and dangers, this solitary bringing up. The mind forced to look inwards--to recall the past too much--becomes sad, and is inclined to brood over its miseries, fancied or real; and Ellen, young as she was when the smile of fortune ceased to fling its radiance, was not too young to remember that times had once been better, happier than now; that there was a day when wealth had made them many friends; a day when they had lived in splendour, with carriages and horses, manservants and maidens; and when she contrasted it with their present life it was apt to make her discontented. She had been too well brought up by her father, who was a truly excellent man, not to know how wrong this was--and she often tried to banish the thoughts from her mind: but they would recur, and every time she encouraged them they became deeper rooted and more difficult to eradicate. Poetry and romance were Ellen's favourite subjects, and neither tended much to fill the aching void. They fed, without satisfying her craving, and like water to a thirsty soul only increased her thirst. The poems of Lord Byron, and the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and other stars of the Georgian era, were her constant companions; she felt how much harm they were doing, yet had not the moral strength to resist their fascination. She began to live in a world of fiction--real life was tame and insipid, and she soon created in her mind some prince in disguise, some knight of romance, destined to lift her from the low estate she then groaned in, to the scenes she was born to grace. Ellen knew--how could she help knowing?--that she was very beautiful. Proud, but not vain, of her beauty, she felt that, living in a position beneath her due, this beauty might yet raise her to her dreamland heights. It was to no purpose that day after day declined without bringing the realization of her hopes--she still hoped on, without considering that the hours most precious were stealing silently away, and yet she was tracing nothing worthy of remembrance on her sands of life. These day dreams "when nearest and most inviting" were often rudely broken by the stern realities of life, and left her more and more discontented, harder and harder to be pleased; and the proud beauty felt as feels the eagle when, with ruffled wing, he beholds through the bars of his cage that heaven he has so often soared to, but to which he can return no more.