Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 2.djvu/146

 the contumacious! You may smile at the hollow flatteries, answering to flatteries as hollow, which, like bubbles when they touch, dissolve into nothing: but tell me, Vivian, what has the self-tormentor felt at the laughing treacheries, which force a man down into self-contempt?

"Is it not obvious, my dear Vivian, that true Fame, and true Happiness, must rest upon the imperishable social affections? I do not mean that coterie celebrity, which paltry minds accept as fame, but that which exists independent of the opinions, or the intrigues of individuals; nor do I mean that glittering show of perpetual converse with the world, which some miserable wanderers call Happiness; but that which can only be drawn from the sacred and solitary fountain of your own feelings.

Active as you have now become in the great scenes of human affairs, I would not have you be guided by any fanciful theories of morals, or of human nature. Philosophers have amused