Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the passage of that river is commonly calm; calm as Acheron.  So long as he gets his fare, the ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries:  he pulls with a will, and heroes may be over in half-an-hour.  Only when they stand on the opposite bank, do they see what a leap they have taken.  The shores they have relinquished shrink to an infinite remoteness.  There they have dreamed:  here they must act.  There lie youth and irresolution:  here manhood and purpose.  They are veritably in another land:  a moral Acheron divides their life.  Their memories scarce seem their own!  The Philosophical Geography (about to be published) observes that each man has, one time or other, a little Rubicon—­a clear or a foul water to cross.  It is asked him:  “Wilt thou wed this Fate, and give up all behind thee?” And “I will,” firmly pronounced, speeds him over.  The above-named manuscript authority informs us, that by far the greater number of caresses rolled by this heroic flood to its sister stream below, are those of fellows who have repented their pledge, and have tried to swim back to the bank they have blotted out.  For though every man of us may be a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day’s march even:  and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant, and wears the features of the terrible Universal Fate to him?  Fail before her, either in heart or in act, and lo, how the alluring loves in her visage wither and sicken to what it is modelled on!  Be your Rubicon big or small, clear or foul, it is the same:  you shall not return.  On—­or to Acheron!—­I subscribe to that saying of The Pilgrim’s Scrip: 

“The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable:  but beware the little knowledge of one’s self!”

Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his Ordeal.  Already the mists were stealing over the land he had left:  his life was cut in two, and he breathed but the air that met his nostrils.  His father, his father’s love, his boyhood and ambition, were shadowy.  His poetic dreams had taken a living attainable shape.  He had a distincter impression of the Autumnal Berry and her household than of anything at Raynham.  And yet the young man loved his father, loved his home:  and I daresay Caesar loved Rome:  but whether he did or no, Caesar when he killed the Republic was quite bald, and the hero we are dealing with is scarce beginning to feel his despotic moustache.  Did he know what he was made of?  Doubtless, nothing at all.  But honest passion has an instinct that can be safer than conscious wisdom.  He was an arrow drawn to the head, flying from the bow.  His audacious mendacities and subterfuges did not strike him as in any way criminal; for he was perfectly sure that the winning and securing of Lucy would in the end be boisterously approved of, and in that case, were not the means justified?  Not that he took trouble to argue thus, as older heroes and self-convicting villains are in the habit of doing; to deduce a clear conscience.  Conscience and Lucy went together.