MAN IS NOT PERMITTED, WITH ULTIMATE IMPUNITY, TO EXASPERATE THE ENVIES AND INSULT THE MISERIES OF THOSE AROUND HIM, BY A SYSTEMATIC PERSEVERANCE IN WILFUL-CELIBACY. IN VAIN MAY HE SCHEME, IN THE MARRIAGE OF INJURED FRIENDS, TO PROVIDE ARM-CHAIRS, AND FOOT-STOOLS, AND PRATTLING BABIES FOR THE LUXURIOUS DELECTATION OF HIS INDOLENT AGE. THE AVENGING EUMENIDES (BEING THEMSELVES ANCIENT VIRGINS NEGLECTED) SHALL HUMBLE HIS INSOLENCE, BAFFLE HIS PROJECTS, AND CONDEMN HIS DECLINING YEARS TO THE HORRORS OF SOLITUDE,--RARELY EVEN WAKENING HIS SOUL TO THE GRACE OF REPENTANCE. The Colonel, before returning home, dropped into the Clubs, and took care to give to Darrell's sudden disappearance a plausible and commonplace construction. The season was just over. Darrell had gone to the country. The town establishment was broken up, because the house in Carlton Gardens was to be sold. Darrell did not like the situation-- found the air relaxing--Park Lane or Grosvenor Square were on higher ground. Besides, the staircase was bad for a house of such pretensions-- not suited to large parties. Next season Darrell might be in a position when he would have to give large parties, &c., &c. As no one is inclined to suppose that a man will retire from public life just when he has a chance of office, so the Clubs took Alban Morley's remarks unsuspiciously, and generally agreed that Darrell showed great tact in absenting himself from town during the transition state of politics that always precedes a CRISIS, and that it was quite clear that he calculated on playing a great part when the CRISIS was over, by finding his house had grown too small for him. Thus paving the way to Darrell's easy return to the world, should he repent of his retreat (a chance which Alban by no means dismissed from his reckoning), the Colonel returned home to find his nephew George awaiting him there. The scholarly clergyman had ensconced himself in the back drawing-room, fitted up as a library, and was making free with the books. "What have you there, George?" asked the Colonel, after shaking him by the hand. "You seemed quite absorbed in its contents, and would not have noticed my presence but for Gyp's bark." "A volume of poems I never chanced to meet before, full of true genius." "Bless me, poor Arthur Branthwaite's poems. And you were positively reading those--not induced to do so by respect for his father? Could you make head or tail of them?" "There is a class of poetry which displeases middle age by the very attributes which render it charming to the young; for each generation has a youth with idiosyncrasies peculiar to itself, and a peculiar poetry by which those idiosyncrasies are expressed."