CHAPTER II.
"Alas! what boots it with incessant care To strictly meditate the thankless Muse; Were I not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair ?" MILTON'S _Lycidas_.
THERE is nothing more salutary to active men than occasional intervals of repose,--when we look within, instead of without, and examine almost _insensibly_ (for I hold strict and conscious self-scrutiny a thing much rarer than we suspect)--what we have done--what we are capable of doing.
It is settling, as it were, a debtor and creditor account with the past, before we plunge into new speculations.

Such an interval of repose did Maltravers now enjoy.

In utter solitude, so far as familiar companionship is concerned, he had for several weeks been making himself acquainted with his own character and mind.

He read and thought much, but without any exact or defined object.

I think it is Montaigne who says somewhere: "People talk about thinking--but for my part I never think, except when I sit down to write." I believe this is not a very common case, for people who don't write think as well as people who do; but connected, severe, well-developed thought, in contradistinction to vague meditation, must be connected with some tangible plan or object; and therefore we must be either writing men or acting men, if we desire to test the logic, and unfold into symmetrical design the fused colours of our reasoning faculty.