Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/13

 and more barren than we then imagined; and we look on the ways through which we pass, not with the eager or the wandering glance of the tourist, of pleasure, but with the saturnine and wary eye of the hacknied trafficker of business. You are settled down to the labours—honourable, indeed, but somewhat sterile—of the bar; and I, "a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures," am drawing from the bustle of the living world such quiet observation as, after it has lain a little while within my own mind, you perceive re-produced in the pages of certain idle and very indifferent novels. I cling, however, not the less fondly to my old faith, that experience is the only investment which never fails to repay us tenfold what it cost; and that we cannot find better and surer guides through those mazes of life, which we have not only to pass but to retrace, than the error, or the prejudice, or the regret which, with every interval, we leave behind us, as landmarks, on our way.

When you receive these three volumes, printed, and labelled, and boarded, in all the uncut coxcombry of the very last new novel, I know exactly the half frown, half smile, with which you will greet them, and the friendly petulance with which you will pish! and think what a pity it is that " should still write nothing else but a novel."—Is it, indeed, a pity, my dear friend? Are you sure that in writing something else I should write something better? For my part, I often ask