But soon resistance, difficulty, unforeseen, coming we know not whence, arrest us, undeceive us, and the human yoke grows heavy on our necks; Thenceforward we become merely sharers in the common woe.
Hemmed in on all sides, we feel our faculties only to realize their impotence: we have time and strength to do what we _must_, never what we will.

Men go on repeating the words work, genius, success.

Fools! Will all these resounding projects, though they enable us to cheat ourselves, enable us to cheat the icy fate which rules us and our globe, wandering forsaken through the vast silence of the heavens ?" Robert looked up startled, the book dropping from his hand.

The words sent a chill to the heart of one born to hope, to will, to crave.
Suddenly Langham dashed the volume from him almost with violence.
'Forget that drivel, Elsmere.

It was a crime to show it to you.