of Rood.

"Here," thought Randal, with a softening eye,--"here, how often,
comparing the fertility of the lands passed away from the inheritance of
my fathers, with the forlorn wilds that are left to their mouldering
Hall,--here how often have I said to myself, 'I will rebuild the fortunes
of my House.' And straightway Toil lost its aspect of drudge, and grew
kingly, and books became as living armies to serve my thought. Again--
again O thou haughty Past, brace and strengthen me in the battle with the
Future." His pale lips writhed as he soliloquized, for his conscience
spoke to him while he thus addressed his will, and its voice was heard
more audibly in the quiet of the rural landscape, than amidst the turmoil
and din of that armed and sleepless camp which we call a city.

Doubtless, though Ambition have objects more vast and beneficent than the
restoration of a name, that in itself is high and chivalrous, and appeals
to a strong interest in the human heart. But all emotions and all ends
of a nobler character had seemed to filter themselves free from every
golden grain in passing through the mechanism of Randal's intellect, and
came forth at last into egotism clear and unalloyed. Nevertheless, it is
a strange truth that, to a man of cultivated mind, however perverted and
vicious, there are vouchsafed gleams of brighter sentiments, irregular
perceptions of moral beauty, denied to the brutal unreasoning wickedness
of uneducated villany,--which perhaps ultimately serve as his punishment,
according to the old thought of the satirist, that there is no greater
curse than to perceive virtue yet adopt vice. And as the solitary
schemer walked slowly on, and his childhood--innocent at least indeed--
came distinct before him through the halo of bygone dreams,--dreams far
purer than those from which he now rose each morning to the active world
of Man,--a profound melancholy crept over him, and suddenly he exclaimed