Yeast: a Problem

most earnest and genial novelist. 'I like your novel exceedingly,' said a lady; 'the characters are so natural

cter,' said he, 'is almost the only

t. And then they set up for critics, instead of pupils; as if the artist's business was not just to see what they cannot see-to open t

y seem extravagant or startling is most likely to be historic fact, else I should not have dared to write

alo-hunts, made him laugh in spite of himself at extempore comic medleys, kept his tables covered with flowers from the conservatory, warmed his chocolate, and even his bed. Nothing came amiss to him, and he to nothing. Lancelot longed at first every hour to be rid of him, and eyed him about the room as a bulldog does the monkey who rides him. In his dreams he was Sinbad the Sailor, and Bracebridg

k you just the best fellow I ever met, and

rent from his usual courtly and measured speech, that Lanc

rateful. But I do hate you,' he said, with

nel: 'I like that. Now we shall see

use you are cleverer than I, readier t

e merrily. Lancelot went on,

t I do not like to tell you so.

yda

ess have you, in the devil's name, to be throwing yourself away on gimcracks and fox-hunting foolery? Heavens! If I had your talents, I'd be-I'd make a name for myself before I di

and vanity, and fine ladies, to form liaisons, as the Jezebels call them, snares, and nets, and labyrinths of blind ditches, to keep you down through life, stumbling and grovelling, hating yourself and

mistaken. Lancelot looked at him for a moment, and then dropped his eyes ashame

el had returned to hi

e shall excite ourselves, and scandalise Mrs. Lavington's piety.' And the colonel pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket, and see

houghts away once and for all.' No, Lancelot! more happy are they whom God will not

ly his new friend's perpetual stream of anecdote, till March and hunting were past, and April was half over. The old squire came up after dinner regularly (during March he had hunted every day, and slept every evening); and the

hlegel's lectures, and thought them divine; and now she was hard at work on Sophocles, with a little help from translations, and thought she understood him every word. Then she was somewhat High-Church in her notions, and used to go up every Wednesday and Friday to the chapel in the hills, where Lancelot had met her, for an hour's mystic devotion, set off by a little graceful asceticism. As

erything which Argemone wanted, and denied almost everything which Argemone had, except beauty. And even in that, the many-sided mother had made her a perfect contrast to her sister,-tiny and luscious, dark-eyed and dark-haired; as full of wild simple passion as an Italian, thinking li

t in self and for self alone she lived; and while she had force of will for any so-called 'self-denial,' and would fast herself cross and stupefied, and quite enjoy kneeling thinly clad and barefoot on the freezing chapel-floor on a winter's morning, yet her fastidious delicacy revolted at sitting, like Honoria

monplace congratulations. Her heart smote her though, as she saw the wan face and the wild, melancholy, moonstruck eyes once more glaring through and through her; she found a comfort in thinking his stare impertinent, drew herself up, and turned away; once, indeed, she could not help listening, as La

indow. It was a still, hot, heavy night, after long easterly drought; sheet-lightning glimmered on the far horizo

reeping over those limes!' sa

n vistas of feeling and observation in the speaker which she had not suspe

hich cools them? But so it is throughout the universe: every yearning proves the existence of an objec

peaking from her inmost heart: but thus does the soul involuntarily lay bare its most unspoken depths in the presenc

era at which young geniuses ar

reat; to have done one mighty work before we die, and live, unloved or loved,

y, to this tirade. She had risen a strange fish, the cunning be

good old-fashioned tents, and gathering themselves into a nation instead of remaining a mere family horde; and gave their own account of the myth, just as the antediluvian savages gave theirs of that strange Eden scene, by the common interpretation of w

he was accustomed to lay down the law à la Madame de Sta?l, to savants and non-savants and be heard with reverence, as a woman should be. But poor truth-seeking Lancelot did not see what sex had to do with logic; he flew at her as if she had been a very barrister, and hunted her mercilessly up and down through all sorts of charming sophisms, as she begged the question, and shifted her ground, as thoroughly right in her con

n general-oh, they hide their contempt for us, if not their own ignorance, under that mask of chivalrous deference!' and then in the nasal fine ladies' key, which was her shell, as

passed together over

the glib Colonel

her shallow and blasé. His good-nature is the fruit of want of feeling; between h

e on its back. But the truth was, Argemone thought herself infinitely superior t

nder heart of flesh, which is either woman's highest blessing or her bitterest curse; how she loses all feminine sensibility to the under-current of feeling in us poor world-worn, case-hardened men, and falls from pride to sternness, from st

ed to the piano; and Lancelot took up the Sporting Magazine, an

up cool perfume, borrowed from the treasures of the thundercloud. All around was working the infinite mystery of birth and growth, of giving and taking, o

stlessly read over to herself

PP

the myrtles

ed the moon; b

ite horizon

ning haze; all

pt among the t

dumb and droop

weed glistene

wl dried their

crept whisperin

. Great Pan wa

th watched by

myriad childr

the myrtles

eep, for sleep th

ssing still: fo

er yearned wi

eins ran fever

ands, and ivory

ith the wasti

y she flung h

balls from the

t the grass, a

ips against the

ised her head,

homeless eyes, w

een deep folds o

lakes between

ssus, at the

a lyre. She sna

music from its

sadly by,-'Ah,

of the tortois

scords with th

hrice-Olympia

ho back in

obler natures

burst out at once into wild passionate life-weariness, and disgust at that universe, with whose beauty she

the idolatry of intellect-trying in vain to fill her heart with the friendship of her own sex, a

her reason than that she gave; but consci

at harm if it is? Is there to be no female Alastor? Has not the woman as good a right as the man to

Oh-hooo!' arose doleful thr

ut a forgotten fox-hound puppy, sitting mournfully on th

t strange if, after she had prayed for the fate of nations and churches, and for those who, as she thought, were fighting at Oxford the cause of universal truth and reverend antiquity, she remembered in

e did not pray for him a

solemn vesper-ceremony of three turns round in his own length, looking vainly for a 'soft stone.' The finest of us are animals after all, and live by eating and sleeping: and, taken as anim

father was there: and he was an Italian boy, and played the organ-and Lancelot was a dancing dog, and stood up and danced to the tune of 'C'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour,' pitifully enough, in his red coat-and she stood up and danced too; but she found her

for that of a choir of brother Eulenspiegels, or, finally, for the edification of Argemone as to her own history, past, present, or future, are questions which we must leave unanswered, till physicians have become a little more of met

s express commands, was sitting up to indite the fo

t constitution, and, from all I see, the power of a man's muscles, the excitability of his nerves, the shape and balance of his brain, make him what he is. Else what is the meaning of physiognomy? Every man's destiny, as the Turks say, stands written on his forehead. One does not need two glances at your face to know that you would not enjoy fox-hunting, that you would enjoy book-learning and "refined repose," as they are pleased to call it. Every man carries his character in his brain. You all know that, and act upon it when you have to deal with a man for sixpence; but your religious dogmas, which make out t

n the long run. And as for bad company and "the world," when you take to going in the first-class carriages for fear of meeting a swearing sailor in the second-class-when those who have "renounced the world" give up buying and selling in the funds-when my uncle, the pious banker, who will only "associate" with the truly religious, gives up dealing with any scoundrel or heathen who can "do business" with him-then you may quote pious people's opinions to me. In

ee plainly enough, in the meantime, how it agrees with "poor human nature." We see that the

r sins she is

hose she has

and spoony sins, like covetousness, slander, bigotry, and self-conceit, are to be cockered and plastered over, while

f-disgusted, self-helpless, craving for freedom, and yet crying aloud for some one to come and guide me, and teach me; and who is there in these days who could teach a f

tion for the solid earthly pudding which you would have to desert? . . . I daresay, though, that I shall not comprehend your answer when it comes. I am, you know, utterly deficient in that sixth sense of the angelic or supralunar beautiful, which fills your soul with ecstasy. You, I know, expect and long to become an angel after death: I am under the strange hallucination that my body is part of me, and in spite of old Plotinus, look with horror at a disembodiment till the giving of that new body, the great perfection of whi