Vivian Grey

fter hours of bitter meditation, he sought his father; he made him acquainted with his feelings, but concealed from him his actual views, and dwelt on the misery of being

dds. Admirer as you are of Lord Bacon, you may perhaps remember a certain parable of his, called ‘Memnon, or a youth too forward.’ I hope you are no

inciples; in the very measures of our administration, the speculative spirit of the present day is, to say the least, not impalpable. Nay, don’t start, my dear fellow, and look the very Prosopopeia of Political Economy! I know exactly what you are going to say; but, if you please, we will leav

nature is, I imagine, much the same this moment that we are walking in Pall Mall East, as it was some thousand years ago, when as wise men were walking on the banks of the Ilyssus. When our moral powers increase in proportion to our physical ones, then huzza, for the perfectibility of man! and respectable, idle loungers like you and I, Vivian, may then have a chance of walking in the streets of London without havin

years’ time, perhaps, or less, the fever will have subsided, and in ten years’ time, or less, your intellect will be matured. Mow, my good sir, instead of talking about the active spirit of the age, and the opportunities offered to the adventurous and the bold, ought you not rather to co

uence which I may exercise over your mind, should be the effect of my advice as your friend than of my authority as your father; still I really feel it my duty, pare

it of speculation which is now stalking abroad; and which, like the Daemon in Frankenstein, not only fearfully wanders over the whole wide face of nature, but grins in the imagined solitude of our secret chambers. Oh! my son, it is for the young men of the present day that I tremble; seduced by the temporary success of a few children of fortune, I observe that their minds recoil from the prospects which are held forth by the ordinary, and,