row, to spend a few days in the country, but will
look in upon you to take leave before we start. Should you be asleep, as
is most likely, do not take the trouble of waking; for in a couple of
days I shall be with you again.--The strangest being on earth!' he
continued, turning to his new friend, 'so moping and fretful and gloomy,
that he turns all his pleasures sour; or rather there is no such thing
as pleasure for him. Instead of walking about with his fellow-creatures
in broad daylight and enjoying himself, he gets down to the bottom of
the well of his thoughts, for the sake of now and then having a glimpse
of a star. Everything must be in the superlative for him; everything
must be pure and noble and celestial; his heart must be always heaving
and throbbing, even when he is standing before a puppet-show. He never
laughs or cries, but can only smile and weep; and there is mighty little
difference between his weeping and his smiling. When anything, be it
what you will, falls short of his anticipations and preconceptions,
which are always flying up out of reach and sight, he puts on a tragical
face, and complains that it is a base and soulless world. At this
moment, I doubt not, he is exacting, that under the masks of a Pantaloon
and a Pulcinello there should be a heart glowing with unearthly desires
and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should out moralise Hamlet
upon the nothingness of sublunary things; and should it not be so, the
dew will rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the whole
scene with desponding contempt.'

'He must be melancholic then?' asked his hearer.

'Not that exactly,' answered Roderick. 'He has only been spoilt by his
over-fond parents, and by himself. He has accustomed himself to let his
heart ebb and flow as regularly as the sea, and if this motion ever
chances to intermit, he cries out _miracle!_ and would offer a prize to
the genius that can satisfactorily explain so marvellous a phenomenon.
He is the best fellow under the sun; but all my painstaking to break him
of this perverseness is utterly vain and thrown away; and if I would not
earn sorry thanks for my good intentions, I must even let him follow his
own course.'

'He seems to need a physician,' remarked Anderson.

'It is one of his whims,' said Roderick, 'to entertain a supreme
contempt for the whole medical art. He will have it that every disease
is something different and distinct in every patient, that it can be