CHAPTER VII. TURRET-TALK. "A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." -PROV. xvii. 17. "Yes, for me, for me He careth With a brother's tender care; "Yes, o'er me, o'er me He watcheth, Constant in untiring love. "Thus I wait for His returning, Singing all the way to heaven; Such the joyful song of morning, Such the tranquil song of even."-H. BONAR. "Know thou that pride Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, Is littleness; that he who feels contempt For any living thing hath faculties Which he hath never used; that thought with him Is in its infancy. The man whose eye Is ever on himself, doth look on one The least of nature's works, one who might move Instructed that true knowledge leads to love, DIFFERENT days were these in the Turret boudoir,-transformed into an invalid cham ber,-from the old summer times of guitars, and poetry, and heraldic devices. In much weariness and impatience the time lagged on. As Lady Elinor could not be quite well and unfettered, she took refuge in the other extreme, and would not make even the slight efforts which the Doctor thought advisable. Lady Clementina used, therefore, eagerly to encourage little reading and conversational parties in the boudoir, from which, however, she generally stole away to recruit herself, by sitting quite still and straight in her own room, moralizing on the difference between the "rising generation" and young ladies of rank in her own early days -greatly to the disadvantage of the former, especially in times of illness. We were ill, and got well again, without wearing everybody to thread-papers," said poor Aunt Clement, mournfully. One relentlessly rainy morning, when the invalid was in a particularly unamusable condition, Leslie began to read aloud a volume of Lamartine's Celebrated Characters, and Dr. Lady Elinor's attention was soon fixed. Brown and Lord D'Arcy came in, and, as the former was tired, and wanted to rest, and the latter was busy carving a doll's cradle for a poor sick child in the village, they begged that the reading might be continued. The party was farther increased by a nephew of Lord Mordaunt's, Lord Edward de Lacy, who was unwillingly detained at the Castle for a few days, waiting for a friend, and finding it desperately "slow;" his cousin Nell with white cheeks and heavy eyes, and gruels, and night-caps; Clem worse than ever; and D'Arcy engrossed with the only person worth speaking to. Billiard-room and stables having failed this morning, he sauntered into the Turret-Room, to nobody's satisfaction, not even his own. Aunt Leslie laid down the book, after finishing the Life of Gutenberg, the inventor of printing, who, finding that to work with his hands was incompatible in those days with nobility, joyfully resigned his aristocratic privileges, and became an artisan. D'Arcy looked up with sparkling eyes. "There was a great man for you," said he. Lord Edward, who had been wearily counting the rain-drops, broke in scornfully, "A great snob, I think, to sink himself into a nobody." 66 66 "I suspect that the nobody Gutenberg was more famous than the aristocratic somebody would have been," said Leslie, smiling. Especially if Montesquieu's definition be a true one," rejoined D'Arcy: "A lord is a man who sees the king, speaks to the minister, has ancestors, debts, and pensions!'" 6 What view Lady Elinor might have taken of the subject, it is impossible to say, had not Lord Edward smiled in a fashionably polite but provoking manner. Elinor disliked her cousin, and could not bear anybody but herself to laugh at her brother, so, with the spirit of contradiction strong upon her, she exclaimed, "Yes! he was indeed a noble, self-denying man to give up his aristocracy to do good to his fellow-creatures." "I don't believe," said Dr. Brown drily, that there was any self-denial in the case ; besides, who says that he parted with his aristocracy; is there only one kind of aristocracy?" "True," said D'Arcy; "one can imagine the black hands of an artisan to be more truly great and noble than the white jewelled fingers of an aristocrat. John Dunbar says that there is an aristocracy of labour, of intellect, of honestly won wealth, as well as of rank and birth." "Aristocracy, in short, being the government by the BEST," said Dr. Brown. "Yes!" quoted Leslie, with eye and cheek flashing, "God Almighty's nobles, and not the Court tailor's nobles.' Thank God for the many in the land!'" D'Arcy's eyes flashed too. "A noble thought," said he ; "I'll never forget it." Lord Edward appeared unconscious that any one had spoken, and turning to Lady Elinor, said listlessly, "By the way, I had a letter from Anna this morning; they are going to get up a splendid fancy ball at |