Union of which we have heard some angry
words, may have its advantages for Ireland
after all.

A GUEST FOR THE NIGHT.

THIRTEEN years ago this very month—
I am not likely to forget the date of the
event I am about to describe—I lived in
a quiet respectable street in the Faubourg
Schaerbeek, in Brussels, and I was a student
of the Hôpital de St. Pierre, attending
lectures there, and studying Medicine, with
the full conviction that I could never make
a surgeon while I lived. A constitutional
horror of blood, and a reluctance to
approach a dead body, which no amount of
use had been able to weaken, were sufficient
indications that Nature had not destined me
for the profession to which I found myself
devoted. Why I continued to listen to lectures
from which I scarcely carried away a single
fact, and to read books upon which I strove
in vain to fix my attention, is not necessary
to be told here. It is enough to say that I
saw no escape; that my fate had willed
that I should be a surgeon, or nothing. All
this made me, after a while, gloomy; then
reckless; then gloomy again. I had taken to
painting—first as an amusement, and then
with the hope of becoming a painter. But
what was there left of faces or landscapes
unpainted in the land of Teniers—that laborious
genius who would sketch and finish a picture
betwixt dawn and bed-time. I saw that I was
born in too late an age. I had ventured upon
literature, and failed. I had devoted myself
to chemistry for a while; had almost
discovered a new way of staining glass a
brilliant ruby; but something baulked me in
the moment of success. This was the history
of all my attempts. I resolved to be careless
of the future; took to cultivating
geraniums, playing on the pianoforte, and reading
Metaphysics.

The house in which I lived, was an old
Flemish mansion with two wings, and a wall;
a row of trees hiding it from the street.
My sitting-room was so wide and lofty,
that no number of candles on the table at
night would drive the darkness out of the
corners. Half the rooms in the house being
invariably empty, the lodge-keeper had
offered me this, at a rent little exceeding the
rent of a garret in England, and my fondness
for geraniums contributed to decide me
to accept his offer; for the folding window of
this room opened on to the flat leads of the
porter's house, and in this space I determined
to make a flower-garden.

It was on an afternoon late in the autumn;
there had been rain nearly all day; the sky
was still dark with clouds, and the air was so
cold that I had lighted my fire. I had been
out walking upon the leads, plucking the
yellow leaves from my geraniums, and enjoying
the sweet scent of leaf and blossom washed
in the showers. The crimson of their flowers
looked brighter than usual, and the silvery
drops of rain hung on the hair of their stalks,
and on the tips of their leaves. "What
need," thought I, "to strive for distinction,
when so slight a thing serves to delight me?"
But, as I stepped up into my room again, a
shadow came over my happy mood; and I
thought of all that had been said by poets
and others about the man who lives alone
and dies unloved. There was my neighbour,
Vandermere, who had just bid me "good-
day" from his window; I used to chat with
him sometimes, when out attending to my
garden, for one of his rooms opened also on
to these leads on the opposite side. He, too,
was a painter, and had begun to study, with
thoughts of rivalling the greatest masters;
had married and got a family; had given up
all dreams of fame, content to copy pictures for
his customers in the Museum; which to do
him justice, were hardly distinguishable from
the originals. He did not talk of disappointed
hopes. If ever there were a happy man, he
was one. "Domestic life," said I, "is the true
consolation for the disappointments of ambition.
It is a wife that I want." But of all
my discoveries this was the most impracticable,
for half-a-dozen reasons; all so powerful,
that if I could have removed any five of
them, the remaining one would have made
marriage at that time utterly impossible to
me.

I walked to and fro, and then stood at the
window; against which a long branch of the
vine, blown from the side of the house,
was tapping as the wind lifted it up and down.
Drops of rain were swept down from the
edges of the roof with every gust, and the
sky was growing darker. Vandermere, the
painter, had gone from his window, and his
light had disappeared. Altogether the aspect
out of doors was by no means cheering to a
solitary man.

Neither was there anything cheerful in
the aspect of my great room. My chemical
apparatus and my easels reminded me of
time thrown away in efforts lost, because
abandoned too early. I considered my past
career, and found it all unprofitable. Six
months previously I had given up some
dissipated companions, and determined never
again to visit a gaming-table, for which I had
begun to feel a kind of inclination. Yet what
progress had I made since?  My spirit
was less; for, my hopes, which were new
then, were now worn out. My future was
more aimless than ever. I knew that my
mind required employment, but I lacked
resolution to apply myself to anything. I
could think of no occupation that might serve
to amuse me that evening. I took out my
case of instruments, polished them for a while,
and then shut them up, and flung them
away. Even my old favourite author, the
Count Xavier de Maistre, could not help
me. I could do nothing but sit in my low