Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/172

 the whirlwind. Confusion, thrice confounded, is the portion of him, who rests, even for an instant, on that most brittle of reeds—the affection of a human being. The sum of our social destiny is to inflict or to endure.

Rather to bear and forbear, Mr. Cypress,—a maxim which you perhaps despise. Ideal beauty is not the mind's creation: it is real beauty, refined and purified in the mind's alembic, from the alloy which always more or less accompanies it in our mixed and imperfect nature. But still the gold exists in a very ample degree. To expect too much is a disease in the expectant, for which human nature is not responsible; and