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"I do not by any means acknowledge that impossibility," responded Redclyffe, with a smile. "I certainly feel that sentiment very strongly in my own breast, more especially since I have left America three thousand miles behind me."

"Yes, it is only the feeling of self-assertion that rises against the self-complacency of the English," said the Warden. "Nothing else; for what else have you become the subject of this noble weakness of patriotism? You cannot love anything beyond the soil of your own estate; or in your case, if your heart is very large, you may possibly take in, in a quiet sort of way, the whole of New England. What more is possible? How can you feel a heart's love for a mere political arrangement, like your Union? How can you be loyal, where personal attachment--the lofty and noble and unselfish attachment of a subject to his prince--is out of the question? where your sovereign is felt to be a mere man like yourselves, whose petty struggles, whose ambition-- mean before it grew to be audacious--you have watched, and know him to be just the same now as yesterday, and that to-morrow he will be walking unhonored amongst you again? Your system is too bare and meagre for human nature to love, or to endure it long. These stately degrees of society, that have so strong a hold upon us in England, are not to be done away with so lightly as you think. Your experiment is not yet a success by any means; and you will live to see it result otherwise than you think!"

"It is natural for you Englishmen to feel thus," said Redclyffe; "although, ever since I set my foot on your shores,--forgive me, but you set me the example of free speech,--I have had a feeling of coming change among all that you look upon as so permanent, so everlasting; and though your thoughts dwell fondly on things as they are and have been, there is a deep destruction somewhere in this country, that is inevitably impelling it in the path of my own. But I care not for this. I do aver that I love my country, that I am proud of its institutions, that I have a feeling unknown, probably, to any but a republican, but which is the proudest thing in me, that there is no man above me,--for my ruler is only myself, in the person of another, whose office I impose upon him,--nor any below me. If you would understand me, I would tell you of the shame I felt when first, on setting foot in this country, I heard a man speaking of his birth as giving him privileges; saw him looking down on laboring men, as of an inferior race. And what I can never understand, is the pride which you positively seem to feel in having men and classes of men above you, born to privileges which yon can never hope to share. It may be a thing to be endured, but surely not one to be absolutely proud of. And yet an Englishman is so."

"Ah! I see we lack a ground to meet upon," said the Warden. "We can never truly understand each other. What you have last mentioned is one of our inner mysteries. It is not a thing to be reasoned about, but to be felt,--to be born within one; and I uphold it to be a generous sentiment, and good for the human heart."

"Forgive me, sir," said Redclyffe, "but I would rather be the poorest and lowest man in America than have that sentiment."

"But it might change your feeling, perhaps," suggested the Warden, "if you were one of the privileged class."

"I dare not say that it would not," said Redclyffe, "for I know I have a thousand weaknesses, and have doubtless as many more that I never suspected myself of. But it seems to me at this moment impossible that I should ever have such an ambition, because I have a sense of meanness in not starting fair, in beginning the world with advantages that my fellows have not."

"Really this is not wise," said the Warden, bluntly, "How can the start in life be fair for all? Providence arranges it otherwise. Did you yourself,--a gentleman evidently by birth and education,--did you start fair in the race of life?"

Redclyffe remembered what his birth, or rather what his first recollected place had been, and reddened.

"In birth, certainly, I had no advantages," said he, and would have explained further but was kept back by invincible reluctance; feeling that the bare fact of his origin in an almshouse would be accepted, while all the inward assurances and imaginations that had reconciled himself to the ugly fact would go for nothing. "But there were advantages, very early in life," added he, smiling, "which perhaps I ought to have been ashamed to avail myself of."

"An old cobwebby library,--an old dwelling by a graveyard,--an old Doctor, busied with his own fantasies, and entangled in his own cobwebs,--and a little girl for a playmate: these were things that you might lawfully avail yourself of," said Colcord, unheard by the Warden, who, thinking the conversation had lasted long enough, had paid a slight passing courtesy to the old man, and was now leaving the room. "Do you remain here long?" he added.

"If the Warden's hospitality holds out," said the American, "I shall be glad; for the place interests me greatly."

"No wonder," replied Colcord.

"And wherefore no wonder?" said Redclyffe, impressed with the idea that there was something peculiar in the tone of the old man's remark.

"Because," returned the other quietly, "it must be to you especially interesting to see an institution of this kind, whereby one man's benevolence or penitence is made to take the substance and durability of stone, and last for centuries; whereas, in America, the solemn decrees and resolutions of millions melt away like vapor, and everything shifts like the pomp of sunset clouds; though it may be as pompous as they. Heaven intended the past as a foundation for the present, to keep it from vibrating and being blown away with every breeze."

"But," said Redclyffe, "I would not see in my country what I see elsewhere,--the Past hanging like a mill-stone round a country's neck, or encrusted in stony layers over the living form; so that, to all intents and purposes, it is dead."

"Well," said Colcord, "we are only talking of the Hospital. You will find no more interesting place anywhere. Stay amongst us; this is the very heart of England, and if you wish to know the fatherland,--the place whence you sprung,--this is the very spot!"