: when an Oxonian I reposed within college walls for the first night and the next morrow beheld me surrounded by new faces, yet I was not new to them. My Etonian fame had preceded my arrival, and I was a sort of Crichton, from whom very much was expected. And now I felt no longer an energetic youth striving to win the applause of masters and scholars, but my blood flowed warmly within my veins, and I felt ambition's most stirring power -the ambition of being known. I wished that the world should gain an orator, a politician; I studied very hard, and won unprecedented honours. Meanwhile my character bore the most exalted stamp; but my real moral character had never been tried. Intoxicated by the lavish praise I received, I studied most intensely, and I consequently had not even leisure to ask myself if I could take pleasure in those wild pursuits in which too many of the young scions of nobility waste the precious hours of their collegiate life. I felt, however, that my nature admitted of no medium; study had become my passion, because my abilities had been so early encouraged; pleasure would have been my dominant pursuit had I met with disappointment. But But my star blazed in a heaven where no brighter meteors shone refulgent with lustre, it never set; or rather, if it set, it arose once more to shed glory over my path. My father died, and I succeeded him in the seat he had filled for many years, with, perhaps, more steady zeal than brilliant success. Here, again, a darling wish was satisfied; I never wished to be elected for a borough, but always imagined I should prefer taking my own seat; and when my father died I learned for the first time that my heart had grown cold. For oh, within my father's halls what kind indulgence had ever been my portion! I had received the prodigal son's share of affection, and never eaten the husks of distress or want; and he who was reputed rough to others had ever been gentle to me; he who had never wept a tear for the woes, or laughed at the joys of others, had shed tears of pride and affection when I first received boyish honours. My heart was now a vast sepulchre-it was the open tomb of ambition which swallowed every kindly, every domestic feeling; I was my father's chief mourner, and yet my tears fell freezingly upon the rich pall, whilst the solemn burial service could hardly banish from my thoughts those ideas of greatness which had usurped every other feeling. Cunnington, you remember my maiden speech; you have often recalled that day to my thoughts. I fancy I never shall forget those glowing sensations: nodding plumes waved in the gallery, female voices murmured gentle applause, noblemen cheered, and the papers echoed the sound of my praise; I was hailed as a rising star, and other young men were advised to profit by my enthusiasm. But the session terminated, and I found myself possessed of a strange gift-leisure. "My friends were few, you know; the very gay had never approached me at college, and the moderately so had deemed it cruel to endeavour to spoil a career of ambitious fame. The grave and studious, the slow, the plodding, the sure, had regarded me with feelings of deep jealousy; I obtained so easily those honours for which they plodded; I would have doffed the classical robe-which they clung to the more difficult it was to wear. I obtained laurels, they almost fell at my feet; they climbed rugged hills for their wreaths,—I was none of them. You were going to be married, and I could not claim all the attention from you which I had hitherto exacted; friendship is very secondary to love, at least during the first years of married life. I went to Scotland, and now, Cunnington, begins the grand era of my life-an era in which I accomplished more wrong than those light young men who had sported with many female hearts, yet broken none. "Hitherto my heart had been unmoved by love. I had not absolutely formed any philosophic or Benedictine opinions on its folly, but my mind had never had leisure to flow in that channel, and I had never frequented the bowers of beauty, or trodden the gilded saloons of pleasure and mirth. "The strange little god has a mystic way of inoculating the heart with the arrows |