preaches a soothing and soft lesson from the very text of regret, was not
for the wrung and stricken soul of Godolphin. He only strove to dissipate
his grief, and shut out from his mental sight the charmed vision of the
first, the only woman he had deeply loved.

Godolphin felt, too, that the sole impulse which could have united the
fast-expiring energy and enterprise of his youth to the ambition of life
was for ever gone. With Constance--with the proud thoughts that belonged
to her--the aspirings after earthly honours were linked, and with her were
broken. He felt his old philosophy--the love of ease, the profound
contempt for fame,--close, like the deep waters over those glittering
hosts for whose passage they had been severed for a moment--whelming the
crested and gorgeous visions for ever beneath the wave! Conscious of his
talents--nay, swayed to and fro by the unquiet stirrings of no common
genius--Godolphin yet foresaw that he was not henceforth destined to play
a shining part in the crowded drama of life. His career was already
closed; he might be contented, prosperous, happy, but never great. He had
seen enough of authors, and of the thorns that beset the paths of
literature, to experience none of those delusions which cheat the blinded
aspirer into the wilderness of publication--that mode of obtaining fame
and hatred to which those who feel unfitted for more bustling concerns are
impelled. Write he might: and he was fond (as disappointment increased
his propensities to dreaming) of brightening his solitude with the golden
palaces and winged shapes that lie glassed within the fancy--the soul's
fairy-land. But the vision with him was only evoked one hour to be
destroyed the next. Happy had it been for Godolphin, and not unfortunate
perhaps for the world, had he learned at that exact moment the true motive
for human action which he afterwards, and too late, discovered. Happy had
it been for him to have learned that there is an ambition to do good--an
ambition to raise the wretched as well as to rise.