There are persons in this world to whom all local associations are naught.  The genius of the place speaks not to them.  Even on battle-fields, where the voice of this genius is wont to be loudest, they hear only the sound of their own voices; they meet there only their own dull and pedantic thoughts, as the old grammarian Brunetto Latini met on the plain of Roncesvalles a poor student riding on a bay mule.  This was not always the case with Paul Flemming, but it had become so now.  He felt no interest in the scenery around him.  He hardly looked at it.  Even the difficult mountain-passes, where, from his rocky eyrie the eagle-eyed Tyrolese peasant had watched his foe, and the roaring, turbid torrent underneath, which had swallowed up the bloody corse, that fell from the rocks like a crushed worm, awakened no lively emotion in his breast.  All around him seemed dreamy and vague; all within dim, as in a sun’s eclipse.  As the moon, whether visible or invisible, has power over the tides of the ocean, so the face of that lady, whether present or absent, had power over the tides of his soul; both by day and night, both waking and sleeping.  In every pale face and dark eye he saw a resemblance to her; and what the day denied him in reality, the night gave him in dreams.

“This is a strange, fantastic world,” said Berkley, after a very long silence, during which the two travellers had been sitting each in his corner of the travelling carriage, wrapped in his own reflections.  “A very strange, fantastic world; where each one pursues his own golden bubble, and laughs at his neighbour for doing the same.  I have been thinking how a moral Linneus would classify our race.  I think he would divide it, not as Lord Byron did, into two great classes, the bores and those who are bored, but into three, namely; Happy Men, Lucky Dogs, and Miserable Wretches.  This is more true and philosophical, though perhaps not quite so comprehensive.  He is the Happy Man, who, blessed with modest ease, a wife and children,—­sits enthroned in the hearts of his family, and knows no other ambition, than that of making those around him happy.  But the Lucky Dog is he, who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and down his room, in morning gown and slippers; drums on the window of a rainy day; and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his fingers at the world, and says, ’I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for.’  I had a friend, who is now no more.  He was taken away in the bloom of life, by a very rapid—­widow.  He was by birth and by profession a beau,—­born with a quizzing-glass and a cane.  Cock of the walk, he flapped his wings, and crowed among the feathered tribe.  But alas! a fair, white partlet has torn his crest out, and he shall crow no more.  You will generally find him of a morning, smelling round a beef-cart, with domestic felicity written in every line of his countenance; and sometimes meet him in a cross-street at noon, hurrying homeward, with a